Current mood:	upbeat
Entry tags:	convergence

a long lever
We have decided to change CONvergence to a four day convention, effective for 2009 and going forward. I am going to discuss this change in this post. We have spent a lot of time evaluating the ups and downs of a four day convention. We assert that the potential benefits outweigh the potential harms, by a significant margin. We have learned so many lessons about running this convention effectively in the last 10 years! And in one convention, many of those lessons have been markedly revitalized by the revelation of a four day's potential for greatness.

Since this isn't an official organ of the Society, I want to talk about a four day convention from several personal perspectives. That I am a board member of the Society lends a certain amount of weight to what I'm saying, but not everything I'm saying represents the board as a whole. You will have to take that into consideration.

I am confident that the final conclusions in this post reflect the deliberations of the community and the board. They are strongly colored by personal experience. I want to assert my personal experiences because I have picked up a number of lessons from them. I have a lot to say, and I've reduced it down to the post you see before you. However, you can also click the cuts to read much more in depth. Be warned, behind the cuts is a lot of text, more than you've heard from me in any kind of public way about any of these topics.



I remember Minicon.

Oh don't get me wrong—I'm fully aware that Minicon is still going on. Still happens every year. In fact, they've even moved back to the good ol' RadSou-errr...Sheraton. But I remember when Minicon was, you know, MINICON, when you could just say "con" and most fellow travelers in the area knew you weren't talking about The Spanish Prisoner or white van speakers.

But I remember: all those parties, all the fun, all the hiding out and trying new things. Yep, lost my virginity at Minicon. Yep, made some of my longest friendships at Minicon. Yep, volunteered: badger, consuite flunky, parties, hotel. Just a few shifts--enough to earn a t-shirt a couple years.

I know I know, I'm supposed to be some kind of second or third generation raver drum-jam joyboy type and I can never really know what it's like, man. But I do remember. I also remember how it ended. I mean, the Minicon of my heart, I remember that.

See, I read the whole entire high resolution proposal. I participated in the forums and email lists. (Even then Jeremy Stomberg was treated by his elders as some kind of whipping boy, you might recall.) But I remember, ever so vividly, something Steven Brust wrote in his support of the Hi-Res proposal. I took it to heart and I took it hard, man. Very..

Steve (can I call him Steve when I'm not talking to his face? I dare):

Patrick Nielsen Hayden once explained it to me this way: "There are three fannish centers in the country," he said. "Boston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. Boston is Law, Los Angeles is Chaos, and Minneapolis is Faerie." I like that. I wish it were still true.

Who here recognizes what Herr Brust was lamenting? It's a lament that every community—not just fans—every community sings as times change, and yeah, for Steve it had particular focus, one which he may or may not like me appropriating here. But why start shying away now?

Steven's lament had a specific vision in mind, which doesn't include all the details I hear in my head. But the concept is resonant, regardless of the details. For it is a lament that is echoed by anyone who sees other people move in on territory they've trailblazed. It is the passing of one thing and the nascence of another.

Well, the High Resolution Minicon Proposal may have actually succeeded: it changed the focus of the convention and quite possibly preserved the core of what they wanted to preserve. But it's their version. Right? Nothing wrong with that, but let's get this clear out in the open: it's their vision of "faerie." We're talking Steven Brust's idea of what constitutes faerie, not necessarily yours and mine.

Right or wrong, there wasn't room in that rendition of the vision for many of the things I hold dear about a convention experience. Not that there's no room for me, as those fans are actually able to be hospitable people. But apparently there was not room for what I longed for in a convention, while keeping the event aligned with its foundational culture and sustainable.

They had departments burning out. They had been losing money for years. It's all there in the Proposal and in other records; I'm not idly speculating on "things unknown to me." As Minicon happened in the big convention years of the early 90s, it had a lot of complex moving parts and not enough of the kind of people they wanted/needed, or the coordination and communication, to make it happen precisely that way year upon year.

Think about this. Minicon went from 60 attendees in 1968 to over 3,000 in 1994. (possibly sooner, but Fred Levy Haskell's history doesn't have precise numbers for 88-93). CONvergence has gone to 3,200 in less than half the time. That bears repeating: it took 25 years to reach three thousand people at Minicon, a number that stretched them to the breaking point. CONvergence crossed that line in ten.

Is it better to burn out or to fade away, am I right? Heh heh.

Well, the thing is, right now, CONvergence does have enough people at its current level, and our convention committee numbers are growing. (It should be noted that we have a pretty big convention committee.)

We have many hands. We have solid financial underpinnings. Having built back from an early scare in which over $25,000 was stolen from the organization, the Society and our two standing committees of MISFITS and CONvergence have built up a very strong fiscal situation. Larger sums than ever are sitting in the bank accounts. Comparatively speaking, CONvergence, MISFITS, and The MN Society for Interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy are cash-rich, and ready to tackle the future. We have proud accomplishments in the schools and with the new Space Camp scholarship initiative; and club memberships and events are doing well. We are moving things forward in steady, effective ways. This thing is for real folks, and you're a part of it.

Right now we're making it. From some perspectives, we're more than just "making it." We are in a position where the convention and its community are very strong. This strength is why we must prepare for change, and we must enact change. We have a responsibility to the community to shepherd these ten years of successes into a sustainable future.

An ounce of prevention can be a pound of cure in these circumstances. We have a marvelous opportunity to prevent burnout. We have a marvelous opportunity to preserve a culture that brings very diverse fans into one place in order to celebrate our strange and wonderful variety. This is our vision of faerie, one we've built with our own passion and hands. We seized the mantle of "faerie" for ourselves and have grown a wonderful thing out of it.

And. AND we have a chance to keep it alive and hand it off to another generation.

See, this is also what I remember about Minicon:

I remember lugging a bucket of something or other through the connected rooms of the consuite, back when it was still up on 22 and surely had the best consuite vista in all of fandom. I remember lugging that bucket back through the far end of the room and there was a guy there. The Subhead. (That's how I'll always remember him, even though I now have a more complete understanding of that title than I ever did.) I'm sure I've confused the descriptive details, so I probably won't build a picture of someone you can name. But he was in black pants with a white tunic. He had a leather mug. He had lots of hair. And He. Was. Fried. This guy was burned out. He was slumped in a chair, glowering toward the windows shaking his head. I gave my best sympathetic wry smile and murmured something like, "Rough night, eh?"

I got a wordless response: rolled eyes, a shaking head, and a sneer, "Pshhh..." Recognizing I was not really needed or welcome, I continued my errand out the door, emptying one thing and refilling some other things. I came back in the door and The Subhead was talking with a couple of women, he was one of those loud guys. He was arrogant, contemptuous, and he was laying it down for these gals as I came through the door "--but yeah this is why it's such fucking bullshit. They should get some Rangers in there and fucking make it clear this can't go like this!" I sort of shuffled toward the scene, I was drawn in because they were obviously talking about Something Important and I wanted to get a scoop. Plus I was just drawn to that sort of thing then, I wanted to be included in something dramatic. How naive. But I wanted to be included! I wanted to be inside the convention, to get to know this thing that was so compelling for so many people and to be a part of it!

One of the women muttered something I couldn't hear and walked away past me, toward the other end of Consuite. The Subhead was activated by this and stood up, turned toward the door I'd come through and brushed past me. "Yeah," he said to her, confident she'd been recruited to whatever his cause was. "Go get a Ranger and tell them to get that shit figured out. And don't listen to anybody unless it's subhead or above, okay? FInd someone subhead level or above. Just tell them it's subhead level or above. God this is such bullshit!" he paused in the doorway and finally noticed me. "Hey! What were you doing back there?"

"Uh. I'm volunteering."

"Well check those bowls and make sure they're full," and he was gone. (He was right about the bowls, I should point out.)

This encounter gave me an awareness, one which I began to apply to a number of other similar moments. That's when I began to see them: Very. Angry. People. People who also happened to be in charge or at least nominally running things. They were everywhere! They were people who were pissed about things large and small. At the same time they were very disinterested in (actively hostile to!) volunteers and attendees, the ones who helped make the convention possible in the first place.

I feel I became quite attuned to seeing those people, recognizing their ways and habits, spotting them particularly well in the Radisson/Sheraton habitat. I see them, still. They show up for CONvergence, too, it seems. Their numbers appear to be stabilized, but their risk of population explosion rears its head. I really hate this attitude in people—not the people, the attitude. It profoundly dismays me when I see it. It's a combination of burnout and a small amount of authority mixed into a toxic brew that causes them to ignore the person right in front of them and instead see the problem that person represents. They aggressively re-register this person in their mind and their demeanor. In their hierarchical view, the person becomes A Problem and then these people decide it's The Problem's failure to acknowledge their unique authority and place in history to solve problems like... well, it's You, right? You're the attendee or non-person who is The Problem, aren't you...?

Gee.

Minicon sought and may have found a solution to prevent that kind of person from being the face of their convention. Presumably that was part of the point of the High Resolution. Well, I wasn't crazy about the solution because at the time I was probably one of the people folks didn't want to talk to—maybe I just don't like the solution because I'm one of the babies who felt tossed out with the bathwater. They got rid of guys like The Subhead but he was really the bathwater they were tossing. The stinky, angry, yellin-crabby-ass-hairy-leather-mug-totin bathwater.

But they did it. Hoping for sustainability, Minicon took a path which dramatically altered the convention experience. They did something different but they found a way to subsist ten years later. Certainly they don't seem to be losing too much money, which is one measure.



I didn't like their changes, but they found a way eleven years later to continue to exist as they desired to. I believe we have a better idea. I believe we have the right idea for this convention.

We have a tremendous opportunity to extend and preserve the culture of CONvergence from a position of strength, instead of conducting emergency surgery in the midst of a fracturing process. We have a chance to uphold the best of our community, and make it more open and more sustainable, with a simple decision.

We move to four days. We do it now and we do it permanently.


How's that work? Here's how: I have complete confidence that a strong majority of concom members and attendees had a better and more successful time at 2008 than the previous years. And they did so because they had more time to do it in. This year all the talk was made true, the stuff we tell non-attendees about how much fun this thing is. This year we lived up to our good press and our reputation!

We dramatically reduced the number of chances for a teenaged or middle-twenties volunteer to be walking through a convention space and into the orbit of a completely burned out subhead or head, someone who wore the fancy Concom badge (and they were extra fancy this year) with a contemptuous scowl. Instead of being shut down and turned off by this crispy critter, they saw a majority of department volunteers and leaders looking relaxed, confident and happy most of the time.

This good will makes a difference. Listen, when I thought about volunteering in the future after getting burned by some burnout, I hesitated. When the opportunity to go to a different convention presented itself, I took it. When the chance to move from spectator to active participant came up, I leapt. When the position on the board opened, I pushed for it. But I started on the outside looking in. Started as a spectator not a participant. I was low on a trajectory of desire from onlooker to participant to organizer. Enjoyment, relaxed and well-supported passion, and good will brought me in to stay. Made me want to roll up my sleeves.

There are future leaders of this community who are deciding whether or not to come back, to volunteer, or to come to a concom meeting. Their decision will be significantly shaped by their encounters at our convention.

They don't know about the budget decisions. They don't know about the hopes and aspirations of MISFITS or of the wider Society. They don't know about what else we could do to raise money in the future for things like Space Camp and scholarships, and other unspoken Big Dreams. They want to be included and they want a place to keep coming back to.



It comes down to the future leaders of this community. You will decide whether or not you want to engage, volunteer, and lead. Each step on that journey your decisions are informed by our convention experience. Will you experience the hostility of a fried subhead who didn't take care of themselves, as I did in my story? Will you find yourself relaxing along with hundreds, indeed thousands, of others and securing long term friendships and opening possibilities?

When we open up, arms unfolding , they rush in, sprites amid the seafoam, fresh spirits of change eager to dance. When the wave rolls back out, will they come with us and crash again at the shore next go-round? Or if they meet a hollow and drowned man among the waves, glowering amid the Great and Terrible Burden He Alone Must Bear, they will flinch and draw back.



I am not asking you to trust me.

This community has some abrasions. Some fractures or wounds, I contend that right now there are more abrasions. There are some personal relationships which are fractured. Those will need to be addressed privately, and I only can say I hope it is soon!

In the realm of "acquaintances" or "colleagues" though, what I observe are very roughened and sensitive patches. Particularly thinning trust across the various ways people are involved—spectators, participants, leaders.

There are thin areas of trust that have been rubbed raw, where people simply do not trust that other people want to listen;

- or believe that other people are actually concerned for their well being;

- or imagine that decisions are made to deliberately mistreat someone;

- or worry that people are not sharing information they said they would be sharing;

- or disdain speaking to one person over another because that second person got "results."

It's any number of these things, and sometimes more. Concom members have varying levels of trust for each other and for various members of the board. That's natural human relations.

But all these negative aspects are amplified--and when it happens, negative emotions--amplified when convention weekend itself becomes a crucible. One thing we can control as a body is to take some of the critical pressure out of the equation!

I consider it naive to stand here and say "trust me, please just trust me that [insert your hotbutton issue here] is going to change."

People who have private reasons to be distrustful cannot be hectored into extending that trust. They may have fair or unfair reasons! But I can't be standing here promising change in how you will interact with the concom or the board; nor do anything to change something that happened between you and a specific board or concom member in the past!

Now obviously, one very sure mechanism to change the board is to stand up and seek election. You have got to think about doing this if you have something more in mind! I simply must insist that if you're thinking about doing it, you stand up and put your name in. (You have until November 1 to say so). People will respect you more, not less if you do run.

But the thing is, you know it will change. You must know that? If you don't, I look forward to surprising and delighting you. It's changing. There are different people there right now, different than any point in the history of the organization. While that is a change no matter how you look at it, More than that, you have no idea how much change agent behavior even the longest-serving members of the board are capable of driving. I listen to those meetings and hear the passionate advocacy for new directions and breaking out of old ruts; it's hard to believe for someone not sitting right there. It's happening.

However I'm just not asking YOU to buy into it sight unseen. I won't treat you as eggs in omelets, nor as impediments to some kind of victory. There's very real work to do to make some old abrasions and wounds heal, and I expect to be part of some of that work.


I am asking you to join us and lead with us. We are determined to see this through and set everyone up for success, not failure. (Joy, not misery!) I don't want you to follow into some real or metaphorical breach. I want you to come along and help lead. Right now. You, right there.

Especially you. We have a lot of work to do. We need to position all members of our community to be included and to succeed. We need to succeed at sustaining this event and the Society. We have a lot of changes to undertake and new levels of challenge to uncover.



A lot of this post seems to have been about trying to speak to the unconvinced, the undecided, or the negative. I can see that. It's not just meant that way, but I get that. Well, I want to address directly the people who support the move to four days. You have a particular burden and challenge. You wanted this, you got it, now you gotta deliver. I'm challenging you to live up to the hope you've backed. You have to bring it home. It's going to mean more work for a time. A lot has been asked of everyone in the past, with the hours you work for the convention, and the passion you bring. But we surely need the collection of people who supported this move to help drive it. This is a matter that requires you who support the change to step up and help transition our whole community through it.  Your confidence and effort will be needed to move forward positively and constructively. You have support behind you. You won't be alone out there trying to make it happen.

That's what I want. That's not too much to expect from this change to a four day convention. Because dude, you ain't seen nothin! You have not seen a thing if you think this is just about a four day CONvergence. When our volunteers and organizers and attendees experience a relaxed, comfortable, exciting atmosphere instead of a cramped, anxious, crumbling one, they will be drawn further in. When they are connected like that, they will want more.

This convention is ready to be a bridge. When participants at all levels come looking for more, we'll be ready. We can steward a new kind of growth, one that opens up the Society to new opportunities. With a strong sustained convention, we open up a strong, sustained Society. Moreover, we can work toward a convention as a celebration of our cultures and accomplishments. When that happens, we can move the Society into new places and new ways of fundraising, new ways of operating, and new engagement with the non-convention community.

I am excited to help lead this change. Please join me.