Here’s a weird one. it turns out that ROFLCon, dedicated to all those Internet fads, was held at MIT this past weekend. Found via the Mozilla blog: Firefox Spotted at ROFLCon (look there for a picture of a life-size Firefox mascot with Tronguy).
Category: Conventions
Conventions and Distance
You may have noticed I’ve been thinking about fan conventions lately. 🙂
It started after last year’s Comic-Con, when I decided I wanted to go to something a bit less…intense. 😯 Last year’s Wizard World LA was nice, but a bit sparse, so I went looking for more comic and general sci-fi/fantasy cons within driving distance of the LA/OC area. Surprisingly, I didn’t find much. Gaming conventions, costuming conventions, Anime Expo, sure, but sci-fi? Pretty much just Loscon, which we both gave up on after 2002 (and from what I’ve heard, hasn’t picked up again). I asked around a bit on some forums, and someone on either the Comic Bloc or Newsarama forums suggested WonderCon, and suggested considering the city as a vacation destination, not just a place to find a hotel for the con.
Since WonderCon worked out so well, I’m looking at what else might be fun. That’s part of why I did my price comparison last month, and Kevin Standlee’s comments got me looking at WorldCons and the like again. Not for this year, but maybe a few years out.
Looking at all these cons, I realized that beyond a certain threshold, distance doesn’t matter. Only the destination. If it’s far enough away that you have to fly, the only thing that distance impacts is the cost of your plane ticket. Whether your flight is 5 hours or 10 hours*, it’s still going to take up most of a day or night when you factor in dealing with the airports. Everything else, from hotel prices to whether you need a passport, a phrasebook, or currency exchange, is a factor of the destination.
WonderCon, I think, was at the boundary of driving distance from here. We could make the trip out in one day, but it was a lot more fun to break it into stages and make it a road trip. San Diego is at the boundary of commuting distance. We could drive out there in the morning and drive back at night (and I did that with my parents for over a decade), but it’s not practical to do for more than one day. Whereas if I wanted to, I could easily commute to Wizard World Los Angeles 2 or even 3 days. (As it was, we only went for Saturday.)
With two cons in Q1, and San Diego coming up in July, any traveling we do later this year is probably not going to be convention-related. As it is, we’ve talked seriously about three possible non-con vacation spots. But it might be worth casting a wider net for cons in 2009 or 2010.
*Katie and I were talking about this, and realized that it’s probably different if you have kids. In that case, a 5-hour flight probably would be significantly harder to manage than a 3-hour flight.
Hazards of Q&A Sessions
I think anyone who’s been to a panel at a con in the past few years will appreciate Mark Evanier’s remarks on opening the floor to questions.
An open mike at a public event has increasingly become a magnet for people who should not be allowed near open mikes at public events. Audiences have begun to dread that portion of the program and to regard it as the signal that the event they came to see has come to an end. Thereafter, they can either leave (many do at that point) or sit there and cringe as control passes from the person they wanted to hear and goes to some stranger who, but for this opportunity, would never be speaking in front of a real audience and/or to someone of importance.
He goes on to mention the warning signs, like “On behalf of everyone here…” The people who, instead of just asking a question, need to turn it into the longest. public. statement. of. support. evar, as they pontificate about how this show changed their life, or that show inspired their writing, and can you please answer this stats question about my home-made Star Trek Role-Playing game after I read you a poem I wrote aaaaaall by myself?
No, really. I am not making this up.
As an example, at the Serenity panel at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con, one “fan” took the floor to make a long rambling comment on behalf of fans who lived in Norway, London, England (“Both London and England?” “He’s got multiple personality disorder.”) etc. and explained that they thought Joss Whedon was “the best thing to happen to television since aerosol cheese.” Then he asked some question about the end of Angel and how they should handle some issue with the RPG. Joss tactfully handed it off to another panelist rather than tell the guy flat-out that it was a dumb (or at least inappropriate) question. (We’ve collected some more quotes from that panel.)
But this sort of thing happens all the time.
Wizard World LA 2008 – Con Report
Wizard World Los Angeles turned out to be a surprisingly good con. Originally I was planning to go on my own, but when they announced the addition of Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli) to the Heroes panel, Katie decided to go as well. So we drove into LA Saturday morning, and arrived at the con around 11:00 AM. I was expecting a much sparser crowd based on my experience last year, but that had been a Sunday. This Saturday was a full-fledged con.
Update: The photo gallery is up!
The Floor
I spent most of the time on the main floor, hunting down back-issues, bargains and autographs. A lot of dealers had brought their bargain bins (some of them, thankfully, alphabetized!), and a lot of them had trades and hardcovers for half-off or close to it. There were also the booths selling high-grade Silver-Age and Golden-Age books, toys and collectibles, and at least two booths selling swords. Yes, swords.
At one point, I overheard two comic-book dealers discussing whether the show was worth it. One of them said that people here tended to be looking for bargains, so it was hard to sell anything else. They agreed San Diego was a better bet.
I’ve been joking that the logo design for this year’s con (see above) was inspired by the gigantic auto show that shared the convention center witl last year’s con. So I was surprised to find a mini-auto show here: Marvel-themed cars, including Iron Man and Punisher SUVs.
There was a stage set up for Guitar Hero. At one point, I noticed the music was Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” It seemed appropriate.
Costuming
There weren’t quite as many people in costume as I saw at WonderCon last month (also a Saturday). But there was a large contingent of people in Jedi costumes, some of whom seemed to be sparring with lightsabers every time I walked down the right edge of the dealers’ room. And there were Imperial Stormtroopers directing traffic, making sure people could find the one large panel room that was half-way to the other end of the convention center.
Comic Book Convention Prices Compared
I’ve been trying to decide whether to go to Wizard World Los Angeles this year. On one hand, it’s close. On the other hand, I just went to WonderCon last month. The astonishing thing is that a one-day ticket for WWLA costs almost as much as a 3-day membership to WonderCon. This got me thinking about comparing convention prices.
So I looked up the comic conventions in the area, plus the other two Wizard World cons that have prices up.
| Convention | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Full |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LA Comic/SciFi (a.k.a. The Shrine) | $8 | N/A | |||
| WonderCon (advance) | $12 | $12 | $10 | $30 = $10/day | |
| WonderCon (onsite) | $15 | $15 | $10 | $40 ≈ $13/day | |
| Wizard World LA, Philadelphia | $25 | $25 | $25 | $45 = $15/day | |
| Wizard World Chicago | $25 | $25 | $25 | $50 ≈ $17/day | |
| Comic-Con Intl. (way ahead)* | $60 = $15/day | ||||
| Comic-Con Intl. (advance) | $25 | $30 | $35 | $20 | $75 ≈ $19/day |
| Comic-Con Intl. (onsite) | none | ||||
And to compare to some non-comic-focused conventions, some nearby, some just big:
| Convention | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Full |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ConDor (advance) | $25 ≈ $8/day | ||||
| ConDor (onsite) | $20 | $25 | $15 | $50 ≈ $17/day | |
| Loscon (advance) | $35 ≈ $12/day | ||||
| Westercon 61 (advance) | $60 = $15/day | ||||
| Gen Con Indy (advance) | $35 | $35 | $35 | $35 | $60 = $15/day |
| Gen Con Indy (onsite) | $45 | $45 | $45 | $45 | $75 ≈ $19/day |
| Dragon*Con (advance) | $65 ≈ $16/day | ||||
| Dragon*Con (onsite) | $90 ≈ $22/day | ||||
| Worldcon/Denvention 3 (advance) | $200 = $40/day |
It’s interesting to note that WonderCon (San Francisco) and ConDor (San Diego) are extremely cheap if you sign up far enough in advance. Also, when you expand to more general cons, San Diego Comic-Con is right in the middle of the range, with several conventions being more expensive. I’d guess that the more volunteer-based cons like Westercon and Worldcon probably don’t bring in as much money from exhibitors, so they’d be more dependent on memberships to keep afloat.
In compiling this, I discovered that this year, Comic-Con International isn’t going to be selling any memberships on-site. It’s going to be pre-registration only.
I guess they’re expecting it to sell out again like last year, and don’t want people to count on something they won’t be able to deliver. Plus I’m sure it’ll simplify matters for the con, since they won’t need to deal with taking money for registration.
Update: Added Loscon for nostalgia’s sake. Also fixed some links; GenCon rearranged their website sometime in the last 4 days, and I somehow typed in the wrong domain name for ConDor.
Note: These are the 2008 prices, except for the ConDor advance price, which is for 2009. All prices were obtained from the events’ websites except for the way-advance price for San Diego Comic-Con, which is simply the price I paid last summer for this year’s con. For shows with multiple membership packages, such as Wizard World, I selected the most basic package that lets you walk in the door.
*CCI always has a booth selling pre-registration for the following year’s convention at an even lower price.