From The Beginning (as I
know it):
The Northwest Convention League is a group set up
avowedly to
compare notes between different concoms in the American
Pacific
Northwest. Until very recently I didn't think they served that
purpose
well, because they seemed to concentrate on face-to-face exchanges
at
conventions, exclusively. Now, however, they have a regular newsletter
and a Web page set up. This is an improvement.
In late 1988 or
early 1989, BCSFA archivist Gerald Boyko brought me
some notes from the
League's founding meeting at Dreamcon 3 (a
Washington state convention), in
fall 1988. It developed that the
League was conceived as a series of
face-to-face gatherings, just
to compare notes on conrunning, at a series
of Washington and
Oregon conventions held each year. (I am unsure of
whether the
League extends its contacts to Idaho, Montana and any
Alaskan
conventions.) Although I made attempts to contact the League in
the
next few years, correspondence was sporadic.
John Mansfield
(then in Calgary) saw the League's constitution and
considered it
"excellent". I was not so positive because, granting
there are reasons for
regional "umbrella" organizations, they
weren't spelled out for this
organization. Granting that there are
ways a network or society can benefit
member conventions, the
initial League documents said little about those
benefits; mostly,
they talked about what the member committees had to put
in. Even
what the League's policies were had yet to be specified; did
the
member conventions have to be registered as nonprofit organizations
in
Washington state? How much, if at all, could the League
intervene in a
convention's business, and how much could non-
members avail themselves of
services from the League? In fact, what
services were there? Also there
seemed to be little access to the
League at all, in terms even of a place
to write to. As it stood,
I concluded, they were letting rumour advertise
for them, and I
recommended a mutual periodical for Northwest
conventions.
(A similar idea had been mooted years before by
BCSFA member Pat
Burrows, who saw the need for a convention calendar
embracing the
whole Northwest, just to avoid conventions scheduling too
closely
to each other. Nothing came of that idea for years,
either.)
In hindsight it occurs to me that some members of the
Convention League
were also members of the circle who conceived Norwescon
at its
outset; I have recently learned that this means they had a
different
take on conrunning issues than many other fans in the
Pacific
Northwest. Jack Beslanwitch informs me that some
League
representatives came from as far south as San Francisco; I
noticed
that the League seemed to have no representation from (or
to)
conventions in the Canadian Northwest, or as far east as
Montana.
I became increasingly frustrated with the League because
I expected
to see the League print some conrunning materials, and
they
wouldn't. (Not, at least, by the time I talked
face-to-face
with a member of a Dreamcon committee, Ryan Dancey; this was
just
before I burned out again on collecting such materials ...) In fact
I
circulated an article to Richard Wright and others describing
what little I
knew of the League at the time, subtitled "Acting
Without Thinking?",
concluding that the League didn't advertise
effectively.
Come to
think of it, that may be why I didn't hear from them for
some years
...
Notice: there might be some entirely good reason why the
League has
not, to my knowledge, held meetings at Canadian
Northwest
conventions; but I still don't know whether the League
exists
officially only in the U.S., or only in Washington state.
Anyone
care to enlighten me?
>From something a League member wrote
-- I believe Larry Baker, of
Seattle -- I took the inference that the
League meetings evolved
into a bid to hold a Westercon in Seattle. (Not the
upcoming one in
1997, but one held a few years ago.) This seemed sort of 90
degrees
sideways to the original purpose of the League. And I have no
idea
whether or not the original purpose of comparing notes on
conventions,
and sharing the benefit of each other's experience,
was being
achieved.
More Active Communication On
Record:
Well, the League may become more visible now. Richard
Wright, of
NWSFS and past Norwescon committees, sought me out at V-Con 21
and
handed me a copy of The Conventioneer, a small
newsletter
published semi-quarterly.
Issue 1:4, for instance
(March 7, 1996), carries minutes of a
meeting called "Security Summit II"
in Seattle, discussing why
security problems happen at conventions. It will
be interesting to
see more issues.
Jack Beslanwitch of Seattle
advises me of a Web page set up for the
League. This carries not only an
introductory description of the
League and its purposes, but back issues of
The Conventioneer,
which is a Good Thing.
For more
information, write:
The Northwest Convention League
4002 2nd NE
Lower
Seattle, WA 98105
U.S.A.
or e-mail
grayhat@grayhat.seanet.com
Or
see their Web page at
http://www.halcyon.com/top/
sf/conleague.html.