You'll note that it's SmofCon *27*. They've been tilting at this windmill for longer than that, but they've had a con about it for 27 years.
Fandom by its very nature has factions, people who are more into *this* aspect than *that* aspect. What started out as a handful of geeky kids who communicated through the letters column of SF magazines and met once a year, eventually spawned countless regional general conventions, spun off specialty cons such as the furry cons, comic cons, for-profit Creation cons, ad infinitum. Heck, you could argue that some large professional conventions had their roots in SF fandom.
Typically - in my experience - a new con is created when The New Kids can't get the Established ConCom to let them play, and they go Do It The Way They Think It Should Be Done. Lather, rinse, repeat. Get too stodgy as Established ConCom, and you wind up with Windycon or ConClave. Don't be stodgy enough, and you don't survive, or you go broke, through lack of control.
Ask 25 fans what they think the convention should have and how it should be run, and you'll get 30 answers. There is no One Right Way, and you're trying to meet the needs of a group that has some core conflicts (e.g. people with kids vs. the kid-phobic) inherent on the fringes.
The way to resolve it is IN MY OPINION :-) to identify the two or three core fandoms the group wants to promote - because only DragonCon can do them all - and do them well. Good luck on getting your concom to agree on just what those core fandoms are, or should be. That having been said, the problems rarely arise in the core; they arise in the Fringe, when participants want to test the boundaries of just what the concom (who they perceive as parents) are going to let them get away with.
no subject
You'll note that it's SmofCon *27*. They've been tilting at this windmill for longer than that, but they've had a con about it for 27 years.
Fandom by its very nature has factions, people who are more into *this* aspect than *that* aspect. What started out as a handful of geeky kids who communicated through the letters column of SF magazines and met once a year, eventually spawned countless regional general conventions, spun off specialty cons such as the furry cons, comic cons, for-profit Creation cons, ad infinitum. Heck, you could argue that some large professional conventions had their roots in SF fandom.
Typically - in my experience - a new con is created when The New Kids can't get the Established ConCom to let them play, and they go Do It The Way They Think It Should Be Done. Lather, rinse, repeat. Get too stodgy as Established ConCom, and you wind up with Windycon or ConClave. Don't be stodgy enough, and you don't survive, or you go broke, through lack of control.
Ask 25 fans what they think the convention should have and how it should be run, and you'll get 30 answers. There is no One Right Way, and you're trying to meet the needs of a group that has some core conflicts (e.g. people with kids vs. the kid-phobic) inherent on the fringes.
The way to resolve it is IN MY OPINION :-) to identify the two or three core fandoms the group wants to promote - because only DragonCon can do them all - and do them well. Good luck on getting your concom to agree on just what those core fandoms are, or should be. That having been said, the problems rarely arise in the core; they arise in the Fringe, when participants want to test the boundaries of just what the concom (who they perceive as parents) are going to let them get away with.
Good luck with this.