Dragon*Con Review

[Baltimore in 98]

Dragon*Con 1995: A Bidder's Eye View
(c)1995 by Perrianne Lurie

It was with some trepidation that I prepared to attend the 1995
NASFiC, which was to be combined with Dragon*Con. I'd heard all
the bad mouthing of Dragon*Con by various SMOFs, who seemed to
object to their emphasis on media, comics, and gaming, but was
not at all put off by this. I was a bit concerned by Ed
Kramer's prediction of 13,000 attendees (which turned out to be
an underestimate), and was more than a little paranoid about how
many of them would be convinced to vote in the 1998 Worldcon
Site Selection (for Atlanta and against Baltimore).

For several weeks before the con, I and many other program
participants tried without success to get a preliminary or final
program schedule. I did not find out what I'd been scheduled
for until the day before the con, when I downloaded the complete
schedule and searched it for my name. I discovered that I'd
been scheduled for five panels on Friday: three in a row from
11:30 am to 3:30 p.m., one opposite the banquet, and one at 10
p.m., one on Saturday, and another on Sunday afternoon.
Needless to say, my first stop after registration would be
program ops.

Registration ran fairly smoothly, although they did not have my
badge at the "Guest" table (since I had purchased a membership
by virtue of voting in the 1995 NASFiC site selection at
MagiCon), and (as I later discovered), they did not give me the
"Dear Guest" letter that all the program participants were
supposed to get. This may have been just as well, since much of
the information in the letter was erroneous.

When I got to program ops, there were a lot of program
participants looking to find out what their schedules were.
They were all eagerly pouncing on my GEnie printouts when the
"official" staff arrived and suggested they look through the
pocket schedule (which was less up to date than the GEnie
printout) to find their panels. I was lucky not to have been
scheduled for simultaneous events; others were not: one
participant was twice scheduled for two events at the same time
(she took the people from her reading with her to one of her
panels, thus achieving the impossible by being in two places at
once!), and one unlucky soul was scheduled for three events
simultaneously. There were no individual itineraries, and the
program had not been cross-referenced by panelist. (Had they
been thinking ahead, they might have had a computer in Program
Ops to allow at least a word search of the text.) I gave the
staff a written list of the four panels I wanted to drop (which
they either lost, ignored, or failed to pass along), wrestled my
GEnie printout free from other anxious panelists, and set off in
search of my bid table.

After asking several con staffers with headsets for instant
communication with I-don't-know-whom (who were all less than
helpful) I found the "round room" where the map of the bid
tables was located. My table was located between an empty table
(which was subsequently filled with a group of, I believe, Misty
Lackey fans) and the Philadelphia in 2001 bid table. They
cleverly staggered the 1998 bidders so that none of us was
adjacent to another. On the other side of the Philly table was
Niagara Falls in 1998, followed by Chicago in 2000, and then the
ACME Atlanta in 1998 bid. Boston in 1998 was next to the tables
for the seated Worldcons, LACon and LoneStarCon. After several
hours of searching for the rest of my bid committee, I finally
got the bidding materials and was able to open the table.

The most frequently asked questions at my bid table during the
con were (in order of frequency):
1. Where do I register for Dragon*Con?
2. Where's the bathroom? and
3. What's a Worldcon?
(Usually, once I'd answered #3 and explained how to vote, they
walked away in total disinterest. It seems our fears about the
hoards of Dragon*Con regulars being convinced to vote for
Atlanta were groundless.) I didn't sell a lot of bid-related
merchandise or presupports, but we collected about a dozen site
selection ballots to hand carry to Glasgow, and a lot of other
fans stopped by to complain about Dragon*Con and promised to
vote for Baltimore. We had bid parties, but the hotel charged
us $70 corkage, even though we'd been told by the con com that
it would be waived. I heard from one of the Dragon*Con
directors that they'd wanted to charge us $240, but they'd been
talked down to $140, of which Dragon*Con paid half. The other
bid parties were also charged corkage (although it wasn't as
much since they weren't serving alcohol), but at least one of
them had seen the threatened charge disappear from their hotel
bill before they checked out.

The art show had to be seen to be believed. Due to some sort of
miscommunication about the dimensions of the space available and
the fire marshal's recommendations, there was about three times
as much art as could fit in the available space. On Sunday, Ross
Pavlac measured the aisles and found a maximum clearance of 30
inches between the panels (which were arranged in a maze-like zig zag
pattern), with a some aisles only 26 inches wide. They made the aisles
one-way, because two people could notpass each other in that space!
There was a lot of really niceart, but no one could see it because
you couldn't stand back farenough, or were hyperventilating from
the claustrophobic spaces. And if you were in a wheelchair, or simply
large (as fen are wont to be), you couldn't get into the aisles at all.
It was also very hard to even find the art show, which was tucked away
in a corner of the dealers' room with no signs to indicate its
presence.

The art show rules were not posted (although they tell me that
there were some written on the individual bid sheets), bags were
not checked for cameras or stolen art, and there was no place to
leave bulky packs, etc. I was told by a member of ASFA that when
the artists showed up to check in, they were sent to the 28th
floor of the hotel to get a computer print out of control
numbers for their art (which they then had to take back with
them to the art show, which was on the basement level). On
Sunday morning I was back in the art show with one of the
artists, and she remarked that the art on the end panels wasn't
the same as it had been in previous days. It seems they were
rotating the art on the end panels (the only ones you could see
without entering the maze) for better exposure. I guess it never
occurred to them that people might bid on the art and come back
to look for it later!

The Dealers' Room was large, but populated by a lot of comics
and weapons dealers, a handful of gaming and jewelry venders, a
total of four book dealers (only one of whom had new books), and
a smattering of other miscellaneous merchants. There was no map
available, and it was very difficult to find your way around
(especially since they insisted that you leave via a one-way
escalator in a different part of the room from the entrance
stairs).

The "main" Guests of Honor were all at the Opening Ceremonies and Locus
Awards/Harlan Ellison Tribute Banquet, but were not scheduled
for panels on the main track of programming. Timothy Zahn and
Bjo Trimble had panels, but they were in the separate Star Trek
and Star Wars tracks. Harlan Ellison had a "Meet Harlan
Ellison" solo spot, a reading (in a room large enough for 30
which was filled with well over 100 people--many more were
turned away-and without the slide projector he had asked for
repeatedly), and two autographing sessions. George Alec
Effinger was less fortunate: his reading was scheduled opposite
Ellison's talk and he had only one autograph session, both on
Friday. He was also not informed about the banquet until a few
hours before it began, and did not find out he was expected to
give a speech at the Ellison tribute until after the banquet had
begun. Effinger was also left stranded at the airport (the
Dragon*Con staffer who was supposed to pick him up apparently
missed him and didn't think to have him paged). I don't know if
he was ever reimbursed for the $20 cab fare. Also, the filk GOH,
Leslie Fish, did not have a GOH ribbon, and was not introduced
as one of the guests of honor at either the Opening Ceremonies
or the banquet. (In fact, one of her concerts was scheduled
opposite the banquet, so she only had leftovers to eat!)

Most of these problems would have been invisible to the
attendees, but so many panels were canceled or depopulated
(either because the panelists didn't know they were supposed to
be there or had dropped the panel because their preferences had
been ignored, etc.) that people noticed. Only one of my panels
was fully populated, and it was only listed as having two
panelists; for another panel, I was the only one who showed up,
so I talked about bidding with an audience of other bidders and
a former Worldcon chair. One couple passed by my bid table on
Thursday evening and complained that all four of the panels
they'd wanted to attend had been canceled. There were also no
restaurant guide or maps of the dealers' room , art show, or
local area available at the con. The film program was only
mentioned once in the daily zine (which claimed it was too long
to print), and copies of the schedule were never handed out to
anyone. I was told a single master copy was posted on the door
of the film room, but, since I never found the film room, I
can't confirm this.

The security personnel were over-officious and frequently rude,
keeping people out of the exhibit hall and dealers' room/art
show long after the scheduled opening times, etc. At one point,
they wouldn't even let the artists into the art show! And if you
asked them a question, they never seemed to know the answer, or
even who to send you to for an answer. (What did they use those
radios for, anyway?) The lack of communications among members of
the con staff led to a lot of needless grief for con goers.
Program ops, green room, guest registration, and the cashier all
had different answers to inquiries about membership refunds,
banquet tickets, and airport transportation, which sometimes
conflicted with the written information in the "Dear Guest"
letter--which only some of the guests received--and daily 'zine.
(I finally got a partial refund for the banquet ticket, shared a
taxi to the airport--at our expense--with three other program
participants , and am still waiting for my membership refund.)

Also, despite all those "security" personnel with the radio head
sets, people had complaints about security lapses. A group of
four adults and one child came up to me on Sunday morning after
having gotten refunds from Dragon*Con (after their concerns
about a dangerous situation were ignored by con security) and
asked if they could change their site selection ballots (which
they'd marked for Atlanta and mailed before the con); they were
willing to drive from Baltimore to Annapolis to retrieve them
personally!

There were a few things at Dragon*Con that did work well. The
program book was very nicely done, with a full color,
wrap-around Michael Whelan cover and a new short story by Harlan
Ellison. The daily 'zine came out daily (although many of the
schedule changes were not included in it). I'm told that the
"Queen's Own" and Star Trek programming tracks ran smoothly. The
MST3K and Atlanta Radio Theatre presentations were quite
popular, as was Cliff Stoll's talk (next door to MST3K).

Several of the guests of honor, and even members of the
Dragon*Con committee and ACME came up to me during the
convention to tell me they would be voting for us (or asking how
to presupport). I expect to see them in Baltimore in 1998.
--
-Perrianne Lurie
"Pirates of Fenzance"
Baltimore in 1998 Worldcon Bid
balti...@access.digex.net