34 thoughts on “Taking Inventory of Future Worldcon Bids”

1. It occurs to me that within a year or two we will start seeing serious bids for years that are after my anticipated retirement date. When did I get so old?

2. There were ribbons for “New York City 2039”. Caravan Hall is long gone tho.

3. Let’s not forget the classic Trantorcon in 23309, a joke bid that’s been around since I was a kid–and for which I currently run the FB page. (Not that I’ve done much with it yet, but I certainly welcome members/contributions/jokes.)

4. I would love to see a WorldCon in Perth in 2025. Trekking over to the northern hemisphere is rarely feasible for me. Though I’m not sure I like Perth’s chances against the Pacific Northwest.

5. I missed most of the Perth presentation at the Fannish inquisition, because I went to the loo, before the next panel started up, but the Pacific Northwest guy was really vague, so maybe Perth has a chance.

6. Pacific Northwest doesn’t even tell me what country they are bidding for…

7. “Afterglow”? The idea was first floated at the Dublin 2019 bid party. I would know, I was one of the first to hear about it.

   Unfortunately I can neither deny nor confirm that the bid is genuine. (We’re gonna have to wait and see what the Kansi Areena turns out to be like before we could confirm a bid, to be honest.)

8. Tampere! Tampere! Tampere! *chants*

9. @Hampus

   Well, it’s the north west of the Pacific Ocean, init? Not sure where exactly they mean though, maybe The Rat Islands?

10. The Pacific Northwest bid is for Seattle, and we’ll have more info out by December. I’ve been wrapping up my time as the Norwescon chair and starting deconstruction on my garage so I’ve been moving a bit more slowly.

    -Kathy Bond

11. @Hampus: Given who spoke, I assume it’s the U.S.; I don’t know whether Vancouver has the space or people (although I hope most people would feel the messed-up Westercon they did in 1991 is ancient history). There are obvious reasons for being vague:
    * Portland is a great city but its facilities and costs are unknown;
    * Seattle and local fans could not come to terms in a couple of previous tries;
    * Spokane fit its attendance very well (and I really liked having the option of going between items via a riverside path), but it’s remote.

12. I am shocked that little has happened with the Qatar effort.

13. @Cora Oh, I’m glad to hear that! Perth has a pretty committed community, so I’m hoping that will help see them through.

    @Hampus The US’s general trend of mentioning city/state but never country is a pet peeve of mine.

14. Chicago, yaaaaaasssssssss.

    Just give it to them now.

15. Xtifr on August 14, 2017 at 10:18 pm said:
    I think I have two memberships…the cards are around somewhere.

16. I haven’t done any updates to WSFS.org while here in Helsinki. Maybe if I hadn’t also been chairing the WSFS Business Meeting, I would have taken more time. Similarly, TheHugoAwards.org needs more updating that what I did to get the winners up and the annual page minimally updated with the winners, such as adding a photo of the trophy over which I know we have the rights and pestering Worldcon 75 for additional information and storing local copies of the five separate Hugo reports. However, I’m still trying to use my vacation time for vacation. (I’m in Helsinki today, flying to Iceland for four days tomorrow morning, then spending two more days traveling home.) When I get home and get some recovery from my travels, I’ll start cleaning things up.

    I’m about ready to drop the Qatar bid unless something plausible happen.

    “Pacific Northwest” means in this case two different potential countries, including as it does British Columbia (Canada), Washington (USA), and Oregon (USA).

    As far as it goes, I would prefer that Worldcon membership badges include more than the country name. I’d include City, State/Province for larger countries like the USA, Canada, and Australia, and then Country. Thus “Fernley, Nevada, USA” for me.

17. I prefer just country. (But then for Worldcon75 you could have about whatever you wanted there.)
    I don’t like the state or the town I’m in and am happy enough to be identified as a person from my country instead of a person from the most hoittytoitty and annoying part of the country that gets taken by outsiders as THE STEREOTYPICAL IMAGE of the country as is, when I culturally very much do not identify with the region I’m in and am only here for economical reasons.

18. @Kevin Standlee

    Well maybe state. City may be too much unless it is a major metropolis – and I don’t think Fernley counts.

19. andyl: that’s an invitation to a classic the-concom-doesn’t-need-this-tsuris argument: when is a city big enough to be listed separately? (Not that Kevin’s suggestion of listing states only for larger countries doesn’t also have this problem.) There was a time when name badges were small enough (2″x3″?) that fitting on extra info (in addition to artwork) was difficult, but the larger pouch badges seem to be getting more common, especially at Worldcons. I wonder how difficult a semi-graphic solution (e.g., name and outline of the country, with a dot locating the member) would be, and whether it would be better than the conversation-opener of “So where is X, anyway?”

20. If we can have badge names, why not badge locations?

    I wish I was given a second sticky label I could stick on the reverse of my badge, to save worrying about spinning it (optional, as I gather some authors turn theirs to be off duty)

21. When I first started attending Worldcon, I seem to remember City/State/Country being pretty common on badges. What’s wrong with including City?

22. What’s wrong with including City?

    In my case, I prefer not to specify, ever since I got a 2am phone call from a drunk racist who wanted to tell me how much he liked the latest POWER MAN & IRON FIST issue I’d written.

    I realize that in the internet age it’s ridiculously easy to track down my address and phone number, but I’d rather not make it easier. Whenever feasible, I don’t even name the state, just list my location as “the Pacific Northeest.”

23. I think it would be cool if each badge had a continent on it, and there was a fine-tipped marker that you could use (if you wanted to) to put a little red or blue or purple or green dot at more-or-less your location.

    Or there could be separate “Where I’m From!” badges or pins to pick up, again with a continent on it. And the aforementioned fine-tipped markers. (Some wags might request the Moon or Mars; I’d be fine with that, too!)

    Much easier to have fans do that themselves then have to write a computer program to do it for them, and easier to do it this way (opt-in, as it were) than accidentally dox someone who does not want their info out there.

24. @Kurt: AFAICT most conventions have had the capacity to print something other than a legal name; possibly the capacity to suppress location should be added. OTOH, @Cassy’s idea also appeals; I’m sure somebody would complain bitterly (it wouldn’t be fandom if there were no complaints), but I’d love to know what the overall reaction was.

25. @Chip Hitchcock, And since the Worldcon reg would know how many pre-regged from Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, South America, Australia/New Zealand, and even, I suppose, Antarctica… they could have a sufficient quantity of pre-printed “Where I Came From” badges/buttons to give to the fans to pick up and mark.

    (Probably including a representative sample of non-Earth planets, I suppose.)

26. Why not make location a free text field? If someone thinks of themself as a New Yorker despite currently being at graduate school in California; wants to identify with their hometown rather than the metropolis they’re working in; or thinks anything more specific than what country they’re from is irrelevant or too personal, let the badge say “Vicki Rosenzweig, North America.”

    The concom may need my wallet name and a current mailing address, but they needed them when I bought the membership. If I’d bought a Worldcon 75 membership two years ago, it would have had “Bellevue, Washington” as my location, rather than the town I live in now, or the city I’ll be living in two weeks from now. It took me ages to get all the changes of address dealt with last time: I don’t remember what site I was looking at a few months ago that had neither my current address, nor the previous one, but the place in New York that I moved out of in 2013.

27. @Cassy B: I was figuring on printing the continent with the name, on the grounds that people may change location (cf @Vicki) but are relatively unlikely to change continents, but I’m not wedded to any system.

28. And if you let people put an “I’m From Here!” dot on that continent (optional!) then folks from Europe who don’t know where Little Rock, Arkansas is, or folks from America who don’t know where Saltzburg, Austria is, will have a better feel for how just how far people have come….

29. Wonder how many “Springfield, USA” would appear on some name tags?

30. Michael J. Walsh, would they mark their location with a tiny donut…?

    (I still say Springfield is obviously the one in Illinois…)

31. @Vicki: That’s a great idea! Maybe you’re not voluntarily where your mailing address is, say in school or the military. I’ve met German guys who were stationed in Texas for tours; pretty sure they didn’t consider themselves and their family Texans and North Americans for that (Although they sure liked cowboy boots and hats).

    Let people be as general or specific as they want, just like with badge names. Kevin can be from Fernley, NV, USA and Kurt can be from The Pacific Northwest, North America. Min could be from their home area, not the snooty part. I could be from Northern California, because I ain’t in the Hollywood and Disneyland part, thanks much. If they want to be from Springfield, that’s cromulent. Pern? Sure, it’s SF. Probably need to be a limit to the character length or some smartass will give their town, state, country, planet, spiral arm, galaxy…

    I’ve seen plenty of badges that had city, state or equivalent, and country; why just country? That doesn’t narrow it down much if you’re from the US, Australia, China, Russia, Canada, Brazil, etc.

    New Orleans seems to have picked another bad year to bid. Might lose out to original Orleans (I know, it’s not big enough, but I had to make the joke). They might do well to punt and stake out 2026 for their own.

    I have at least one TrantorCon ribbon. IIRC Larry Niven gave it to me.

32. Regarding the New Orleans bid, at the Fannish Inquisition in Helsinki, the Nice folks – though nice – were fairly vague (and even though they had a table, they did not have ribbons), whereas New Orleans seemed to have its bid much more together. So I wouldn’t count them out just yet.

33. @Cassy B: whippersnapper! The one in Massachusetts — home to basketball and Indian Motorcycles, among other things — is obviously more obvious (says this Massachusettsian-by-adoption…).

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