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Some sanity in the schadenfreude: Dashcon
Jul. 14th, 2014 01:44 pmLong story short, if you haven't seen it explode across social media and blogs: Dashcon was held in Illinois this weekend and "clusterfuck" doesn't begin to cover it. Expecting 3000-7000 people and getting (depending on who you talk to) 500-1000, despite having held a kickstarter and gathered at-the-door money and presale ticket money, the convention was underfunded with only (depending on which numbers you use) 1/3 to 1/14th the expected budget.
Add an inexperienced concom that didn't communicate with itself much less others, and the highlights included:
1) Gathering all the attendees and saying that if $17,000 is not donated in the next hour the convention will fold and everyone will be kicked out. So, no pressure and no time to think, even though some people did try to get the hotel's point of view. (Short hotel response: "WTF?") The concom is now saying that everyone will be reimbursed, but a great deal of cash was handed over. Without receipts. The concom defense that it was higher hotel management being the problem is a heavily redacted, possibly forged letter that referred to a larger conversation and is signed by a Dashcon concom member.
2) Not paying any of the name guests.
- Welcome to Night Vale, which had specifically taken time out of their tour for this convention and for which specific event tickets had been sold, walked out before their special event. WTNV says the concom admitted they wouldn't be paid even after presales and they opted to cut their losses. Dascon's concom claims that they proved that they *did* have the money to pay WTNV, but that "paypal was having a problem" and WTNV was suddenly demanding money in advance when the contract said pay after.
Oh, and they didn't tell the people actually waiting in the room for a while.
- The Baker Street Babes had been slated for Friday, performed their part of their contract, took one look at the convention going down in flames and decided to bail. At which point they discovered that their hotel rooms had been taken off the concom credit card and put onto their personal ones. And the conceom wasn't answering their collective phones. To be fair, eventually the Dashcon comcon said they were fixing it and apparently did.
...After at least one Babe tweeted about lawyers.
So if you want to make popcorn, just google "dashcon" and check out all the hits on tumblr or twitter. The schadenfreude is strong in this one; if you went to Torchtanic or the Baltimore Discworld con, suddenly they seem much better run.
In the reaction tsunami (Lyndsay Fay's tumblr post about BallPoolCon is hilarious; do read it too), there are three posts I want to pull out and recommend for their historical and business viewpoints:
SciFiGirl47: http://scifigrl47.tumblr.com/post/91607668546/have-you-heard-about-the-dashcon-fiasco-as-someone-who
A con looking to survive has two ‘oh dear god’ numbers. The first one is absolute MINIMUM amount of money they can make. The second is the absolute MAXIMUM amount of people they’re prepared to handle. If the organizers are off on more than 10% on either of those numbers, they are in trouble... [and] ... The number no one ever looks at is the hotel block. (Which might explain how the hotel did suddenly want a lot more money... if that's what happened. The hotel's not talking.)
Methmerizing points out two overlooked points in the many, many ways that the Dashcon concom has practically hung a "sue us" sign on themselves. http://methmerizing.tumblr.com/post/91599691704/dashcon-legality (Another blog -- don't have the link right now -- has pointed out that the $17,000 shakedown involved a hefty amount of minors and that minors also attended adult-only panels, which heads rapidly from "scam" territory into "felony" territory, if not for the latter, certainly for the former.)
Daily Dot points out that this is actually not a new phenomina: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/dash-con-controversy-tumblr/
[D]isastrous fan conventions are cyclical, like a plague of locusts that comes back to hit a new generation every few years.
The last example was only a year ago: Las Pegasus Unicon, a My Little Pony convention that saw a similar timeline of low attendance followed by financial problems and guest payments failing to go through. However, there isn’t much crossover between bronies and the Superwholock side of Tumblr fandom, so most of DashCon’s audience probably weren’t familiar with the Las Pegasus story.
The closest crossover point would probably be Tentmoot, a disastrous 2003 Lord of the Rings fan convention that lives on in the memory of people who participated in Livejournal fandom, but would be unfamiliar to DashCon’s younger audience.
Add an inexperienced concom that didn't communicate with itself much less others, and the highlights included:
1) Gathering all the attendees and saying that if $17,000 is not donated in the next hour the convention will fold and everyone will be kicked out. So, no pressure and no time to think, even though some people did try to get the hotel's point of view. (Short hotel response: "WTF?") The concom is now saying that everyone will be reimbursed, but a great deal of cash was handed over. Without receipts. The concom defense that it was higher hotel management being the problem is a heavily redacted, possibly forged letter that referred to a larger conversation and is signed by a Dashcon concom member.
2) Not paying any of the name guests.
- Welcome to Night Vale, which had specifically taken time out of their tour for this convention and for which specific event tickets had been sold, walked out before their special event. WTNV says the concom admitted they wouldn't be paid even after presales and they opted to cut their losses. Dascon's concom claims that they proved that they *did* have the money to pay WTNV, but that "paypal was having a problem" and WTNV was suddenly demanding money in advance when the contract said pay after.
Oh, and they didn't tell the people actually waiting in the room for a while.
- The Baker Street Babes had been slated for Friday, performed their part of their contract, took one look at the convention going down in flames and decided to bail. At which point they discovered that their hotel rooms had been taken off the concom credit card and put onto their personal ones. And the conceom wasn't answering their collective phones. To be fair, eventually the Dashcon comcon said they were fixing it and apparently did.
...After at least one Babe tweeted about lawyers.
So if you want to make popcorn, just google "dashcon" and check out all the hits on tumblr or twitter. The schadenfreude is strong in this one; if you went to Torchtanic or the Baltimore Discworld con, suddenly they seem much better run.
In the reaction tsunami (Lyndsay Fay's tumblr post about BallPoolCon is hilarious; do read it too), there are three posts I want to pull out and recommend for their historical and business viewpoints:
SciFiGirl47: http://scifigrl47.tumblr.com/post/91607668546/have-you-heard-about-the-dashcon-fiasco-as-someone-who
A con looking to survive has two ‘oh dear god’ numbers. The first one is absolute MINIMUM amount of money they can make. The second is the absolute MAXIMUM amount of people they’re prepared to handle. If the organizers are off on more than 10% on either of those numbers, they are in trouble... [and] ... The number no one ever looks at is the hotel block. (Which might explain how the hotel did suddenly want a lot more money... if that's what happened. The hotel's not talking.)
Methmerizing points out two overlooked points in the many, many ways that the Dashcon concom has practically hung a "sue us" sign on themselves. http://methmerizing.tumblr.com/post/91599691704/dashcon-legality (Another blog -- don't have the link right now -- has pointed out that the $17,000 shakedown involved a hefty amount of minors and that minors also attended adult-only panels, which heads rapidly from "scam" territory into "felony" territory, if not for the latter, certainly for the former.)
Daily Dot points out that this is actually not a new phenomina: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/dash-con-controversy-tumblr/
[D]isastrous fan conventions are cyclical, like a plague of locusts that comes back to hit a new generation every few years.
The last example was only a year ago: Las Pegasus Unicon, a My Little Pony convention that saw a similar timeline of low attendance followed by financial problems and guest payments failing to go through. However, there isn’t much crossover between bronies and the Superwholock side of Tumblr fandom, so most of DashCon’s audience probably weren’t familiar with the Las Pegasus story.
The closest crossover point would probably be Tentmoot, a disastrous 2003 Lord of the Rings fan convention that lives on in the memory of people who participated in Livejournal fandom, but would be unfamiliar to DashCon’s younger audience.
