Post con blues

[luckykaa]

Requests for Redemption 09

#1: Hold it in November '07
#2: Make it last twice as long.
#3: Have twice as many people

This is just me grumbling because Redemption is over and there's not going to be another one for aaaages!

There just aren't enough interactive multi-streamed events and I Want More! I can't wait another 2 years for just 3 days of fun. 

Looks like I'll have to book for Orbital pretty soon, but that's to long a wait.  And I'm still not totally sold on Eastercons.  Discword isn't going to be until August 20062008.  I'm still tempted by Worldcon.  The only problem is, most people I know either can't afford it, or are doing something else at the time.  I'm a bit scared to go on my own.  Teledu and Confounding Tales could both be fun but they're also a bit weird and unpredicatable... 

We need more. 

But that needs more people. 

I'm sure there are whole swathes of fans who could be persuaded to go to this sort of event, if only they knew they were there.

Comments

[tictactoepony.livejournal.com]

Discworld isn't until Aug 2006 .... do you mean 07 or are you planning to timetravel back to do the previous one again?

[luckykaa.livejournal.com]

Ooops.

Fixed.

[tictactoepony.livejournal.com]

Ah well. I still think that time travelling to your preferred convention sounds a laugh.

Obvious answer to the lack of conventions thing is to work out how to organise a small con of some kind in Brighton.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Yes please! I can drive from my house to the first roundabout in Brighton in just over an hour :-) (M3/M25/M23 and viola!)

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I know, *you* run an event in February 08 (yay!)

... and we (the Redemption committee and staff) can come along and go to lots of programme items and dress up in silly costumes and have fun and leave it to someone else to do the badges, run registration, handle ops, setup tech, handle lost propert (and all the other things that take us two years to recover from and to prepare for next time!) ... actually we try to take part in as much as we can because if we didn't enjoy Redemption, we wouldn't do it! And the members of Redemption are wonderful and help out and make it one of the best conventions in the world ever (!!!)

Yes, Year of the Teledu and Confounding Tales will both be unpredictable, but I'd expect both of them to be great fun anyway (though without the slash and with a lot less TV media content).

And because I'm feeling pedantic, I'm going to give the serious answers to your enthusiastic (and wonderful) requests ... but first I will say that if someone else were running it, I'd be at that convention you want in November :-)

#1: Hold it in November '07
It takes time to put such a good programme together (well done Steve!), to organise publications, publicise the convention to get the membership we need to pay for stuff ... and it costs each of the committee a fair chunk of money to run these things (we pay for our own hotel, our own meals and drinks, we don't get groats, we pay for our own transport to committee meetings and site visits, and we spend many many hours on email lists discussing everything from membership badge designs to whether to have an Arabian Nights themed evening to which guests to invite etc. etc. there's probably a couple of thousand emails to read (and many to reply to) over the two years it takes to put Redemption together. And each of us is involved in many other things, for example I'm co-chair of this year's Eastercon, committee for next year, Programme Manager for Discworld Con, I have band rehearsals for filkcons, website stuff to do for SMOF.COM and other websites and tons of other things too!)

#2: Make it last twice as long.
I would be dead by now :-) I got to sleep at around 3:30am Thursday night/Friday morning, 6:30 Saturday morning, 5:30 Sunday morning and 3:30 Monday morning ... and was up and in the shower before 9am each day. That's 15 hours sleep in five days ... eek! But there's too much fun and I can sleep when I'm dead (which will be any day now at this rate!!)
Plus ... "always leave them wanting more!"

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

#3: Have twice as many people
Actually, no. Really, no. (Though saying that, Orbital may well have twice as many people, but a lot of the extra will be people having quieter fun! And a few more families ...). Redemption is, I feel, just about the perfect size ... it's just about possible to meet everyone and spend time with the ones you like best and with some new people ... if it doubled in size then I think it would be too big to get the right atmosphere (plus which we'd start running out of places to hold it in the UK, as Eastercons have found .... old hotels weren't built for big events with lots of function space. New hotels are either being built with lots of bedrooms but just one or two big halls (for weddings and company presentations), with lots of function space but few bedrooms (again weddings and corporate where people show up, do things, then go home at night) or with lots of bedrooms and *no* function space as you are expected to hire a separate conference centre for your daytime event and then just have the one evening dinner/dance/reception event (not lots of programme items until after midnight!). And for the few hotels that have everything we need, many/most of them want BIG money for function space hire (e.g. the Orbital hotel's list price for function space hire is going to be something like 50-70 THOUSAND pounds, we're getting a great deal where each pound spent on bedrooms is one pound less we have to pay for the function space hire and we're getting some of it "free"... but other hotels don't have that deal. They know they can get weddings or corporate bookings in at 10,000/day and sell the hotel rooms at £100-£150 night, plus banquets at 40-60 pounds a person, and full priced drinks etc. Redemption negotiates cheaper bedroom rates, cheaper food rates, and gets the function space as cheaply as possible.

The only places that come close to what we'd need are possibly universities (and they are charging too much now since they can get corporate events and things like foreign student language schools in during the holidays, and the rest of the time all the bedrooms are full of students...) and holiday camps (and they tend to be closed in the winter, and full in the summer ... it has been tried for Star Trek cons and there are other problems too ...)

So, yes, I say "squee" and I'd love to go to a double-sized double-length Redemption in November, but I'm not going to be organising it :-) let me know the dates and I'll be there

[luckykaa.livejournal.com]

Hope my comments weren't taken as a criticism... If it was, I'm sorry. You guys did a fantastic job and I know it's a lot of work, and there's no way you could reasonably be expected to do them more than you do, and I had a great time, and I just want more.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

No, I was trying to say at the beginning that I agree with you totally, and then added the "sensible" reply to say why I wouldn't be doing it though :-)

No worries, if someone else was running it, I'd be there (even if I think double the size is right on the limit ... DiscWorldCon is around 750 and that's as big as I'd go at Hinckley for our sort of event, and we'd have to have more programme items and then more items we'd each be missing that we wanted to go to etc.

but thanks for your enthusiastic enjoyment of Redemption, it gives us a nice warm feeling and reason to do it again :-)

[luckykaa.livejournal.com]

That's okay then.

And I would run a Son of Redemption... Lets see then, I need the faintest idea of where to start, a committee, the address of a good hotel either on the south coast or somewhere just outside the M25, and some idea of figures such as how many people could be persuaded to come to a convention, how much hotels charge for function rooms, how much Guests of Honour cost, and countless things that I haven't even thought about.

Uhm. yeah. So not for November, okay. But I really have no excuse for not getting involved in the fan run cons a little more.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Lots of help available to new potential conrunners!

The best way is to volunteer to help out with another event so that you get to see experienced people making mistakes and that way you'll feel better when the same things happen to you :-)

Costs vary wildly, particularly depending on event size. One of the ways of finding a suitable venue is to see what other people have used for conventions (e.g. see where the Star Trek, Filk or gaming people are running their events) and the other is to use a convention search agency (they get paid by the hotel so it's free to use)

As a rule of thumb, you shouldn't spend more than £20 per attendee on function space, and you should be trying to get the function space for free if you can (it's often possible, after all you're filling their hotel with, say, 100 people on a weekend when it might otherwise be empty, and those 100 people will be spending money in the bar and in the restaurants, and booking 60 rooms (a few singles and the rest twins and doubles)) ... and at this point in history, you should be aiming at getting room rates at 30 to 50 pounds per person per night (sharing). If the hotel is much more expensive than that (*after* you've talked to them) then walk away. But be aware that their first quote will usually be a *lot* higher because corporates and weddings often don't haggle and it makes the hotel rich!

How many people will come? Impossible to say. So you have to decide how big an event you want, sound out people to see if there is something else that always happens around that time of year that uses up their holiday/money, and then pick a size and try to get that many people to sign up.

Guests of Honour: Redemption has a fairly strict policy. We pay for travel, we pay hotel, we pay for a normal amount of food and drink (by giving them pocket money to spend as they wish, say, 30 pounds per day) and that's it. We do not pay appearance fees. This means some potential guests won't come (they are professionals, they get paid for appearing at events and on TV, why should they give up their weekend to spend it with us? Others see it as a fun weekend, a chance to meet up with fans etc. so we tend to get guests better suited for a Redemption ... we also tell them that if they accept our offer, they are expected to hang around the bar and be bought drinks, to flirt with the attendees etc. rather than being locked away in some sort of secret guest DMZ.

The hotel negotiation includes all sorts of things such as cheap food, bar prices, opening hours for bars and food, tech hire costs, making sure we can get access the day before and the day after, whether we have exclusive use of the hotel, how much parking costs, how much will tea/coffee cost for ops/tech, whether we can get real ale on hand pump etc.

If you're serious, drop us (Redemption/Orbital) an email and we'll put you to work (a modern apprentice scheme (grin!)) or just give advice.

[omylouse.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there are whole swathes of fans who could be persuaded to go to this sort of event, if only they knew they were there.

I can be persuaded now I have some moneys... but since my moneys is limited I can't go to all of them! Also away potentially April - July for field work for the next 3 years!

[mingmerciless.livejournal.com]

Really not keen on the idea of twice as many people. Difficult enough letting everyone have their say in panels as it is!

[lordofthewheel.livejournal.com]

www.Recombination.org.uk

Three cons in one, during August, in university accomadation in Cambridge, so not too expensive. Go on, you know you want to...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I'll be there!

[the-ladylark.livejournal.com]

There may not be a proper Discworld Con this year, but there's the 'con-in-a-field' off year camping whatnot.

As opposed to previous years which have been held at the (now sadly defunct) Clarecraft headquarters, this one is going to be in Wincanton organised partly by Bernard Pearson. Tickets and fine details aren't available yet, but it's 3-5th August, and the theme is the 'Discworld Jamboree' (i.e. scouts and badges and whatnot).

These event have in the past been a lot less formal than conventions, and involve more sitting around getting rained on/sunburnt and drinking beer. But they're a lot cheaper, especially if you brave it and bring a tent!