Of All The Nerve!

Armageddon Expo was planned for April 10-12 in Wellington, New Zealand until the rapidly evolving coronavirus restrictions forced them to shift to a later date. And guess where they’ve landed? On the same date in the same city as CoNZealand, the 2020 Worldcon. Thread starts here.

While we have spent that past year working towards our Wellington event planned for April 10-12th we have made the decision to postpone this event and move it to later in the year to August 1st/2nd 2020 still at the Sky Stadium. We won’t be making firm guest announcements until closer to the event.

A number of people have tweeted their disapproval, such as —

Meanwhile, the CoNZealand chairs notified members of two policies announced by the New Zealand government that affect travelers and large events —

On 14 March 2020, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that from today (15 March, NZT) there will be new border measures, with all travellers arriving in New Zealand (including New Zealand citizens) required to self-isolate for 14 days. The measures will be reviewed in 15 days. All cruise ships are being told to stay away until 30 June.

The Government of New Zealand has just announced a ban on large events for 500 or more people. While there is no timeframe provided for how long this ban is in place, the focus appears to be on the immediate few weeks to provide clarity to those organising events during this immediate period.

Further guidance relating to large events is due from the Government later this week. We will continue to monitor the advice from the Government and review our planning, including our contingency planning, once this further guidance is available, however at this time it does not appear that we have to cancel CoNZealand due to the timing of our event still being several months away.

We will continue to update our members and community as soon as this evolving issue develops and we are able to confirm any impacts on CoNZealand. Thank you for your ongoing support and patience.

Norman Cates, Kelly Buehler
CoNZealand Co-Chairs

8 thoughts on “Of All The Nerve!

  1. As available dates in the year collapse due to covid-19 restrictions, rescheduled events are going to clash. Clashes aren’t good but they are better than cancellations (assuming they happen).

  2. Moving your annual commercial media Expo (in that city, there are other Armageddon events run by the same people in other large NZ cities) to clash with a once in a lifetime fan-run Con is better than a cancellation? Only for the commercial event, assuming there are no better dates available.

  3. I don’t think that Armageddon Expo will poach overseas visitors from WorldCon, provided overseas visitors are actually allowed into the country by late July, but it may well poach local visitors.

  4. @Cora Buhlert: and there’s the rub. Worldcons tend to be run on tight margins; losing local late joiners is not going to help CoNZealand’s bottom line.

  5. Yes, a potential loss of local members/day ticket buyers is probably going to hurt CoNZealand. Of course, I would rather attend WorldCon than a comic con type event that apparently is a regular occurrence in the city anyway, but other fans may feel differently. And while many WorldCons have run against major events in the host cities (Dublin 2019 ran against the All Irish Hurling Championship and Helsinki in 2017 was up against a music festival or something like that), they rarely to never run against an event that appeals to the same target audience. And it is a nasty (and counterproductive, since they will be losing visitors, too) thing to do for Armageddon Expo, but maybe those were the only dates on which they could get the venue.

    However, I suspect that CoNZealand will face another hit, when international visitors are either forced to pull out because of corona virus restrictions or will pull out on their own or not buy memberships in the first place.

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