My letter to a con-vis bureau

bids-list@wsfs.org

Rev. 22-Feb-2006

In February 2006, I received an e-mail message which read something like this. I've removed some of the identifying marks; you might be able to figure out where it's from, but that's not the point.

Good Morning Chaz,

Greetings from your friends in (City)! My name is (Jane Doe) and I am a convention sales manager for the (City) Convention and Visitors Bureau. I was looking at the World Science Fiction Society website learning more about your organization and am interested in submitting a bid to host a future Worldcon or NASFiC Convention. It appears you just finished holding the Worldcon in Scotland and NASFiC in Seattle and will have the 06 Worldcon in Los Angeles.

(City) seems like a nice fit for your National Conference. The (City) Convention Center has 246,000 sq ft of column-free exhibit space, 2 ballrooms (43,000 and 23,000 sq ft) and 54 meeting rooms and a total of 5,000 sleeping rooms downtown. I look forward to the opportunity to share what makes our Capital City one of the hottest emerging destination cities in the country.

As the State Capital and home to America's largest public college campus, The University of (State), (City) supports a politically charged and culturally rich environment. It's hip, trendy, high-tech and affordable! Our historic downtown district offers over 200 restaurants, live-music venues (they don't call us the "Live Music Capital of the World" for nothing!), galleries and shops, built-in entertainment for your members!

I would love the opportunity to speak with you and learn more about your meetings and conferences and how I can assist with offering (City) as a fresh, new and affordable host city to you and your members. Is there a convenient time for us to visit so I can learn more about Worldcon and NASFiC and the process a city must take to submit a bid?

Thanks,

(Jane Doe)
Convention Sales Manager
(City) Convention and Visitors Bureau

This is what I wrote back.

It doesn't work that way. And you're talking to the wrong person to convince.

A group of fans -- that is, some of the people who run science fiction conventions -- in (State) would put together a bid for a city. And the members of the World Science Fiction Society would vote on whether we'd have the convention there -- it's not decided by a small committee, it's voted on by hundreds of people. (If you look at http://www.laconiv.org/2006/bids/bids.htm you'll see that this year's convention was selected by 1481 people voting on the issue, and it was a close race: 52% to 47%.)

There's been a NASFiC and a Worldcon in (State), most recently (Convention). (Another fact you could verify in your own research.)

There are fans in (State) that are considering bidding for a future World Science Fiction Convention in the next five to ten years. Some of them live in (City). If you wanted to reach them, you would want to research what science fiction conventions are held annually in (City), and which of them are run by non-profit organizations.

Big exhibit halls are nice, but they're a lot more important to political conventions with tv cameras trying to get a good line of sight. (You can verify how much space a Worldcon uses by asking your colleagues in Anaheim, Boston, Toronto, and San Jose -- sites of the Worldcon in 2006, 2004, 2003, and 2002.) What's important is to have a good-sized hall, and also to have convenient dining and reasonable hotels nearby. Most attendees at the Worldcon are paying their own way -- they're not on an expense account -- so $200/night rooms are right out. Anaheim's room rates are remarkably cheap; even Boston in 2004 had $144/night rooms. You can confirm that on the 2004 Worldcon's website, http://www.noreascon.org/facilities/ .

Anyhow, it's because of this whole easy-walking-distance-to-food-and-rooms that Anaheim is a viable location while the Los Angeles Convention Center isn't -- the L.A. site is downtown and the place is an empty wasteland at night.

These are things you might consider when you look at (City)'s suitability, and when you find the right group of fans to approach. And I was at a convention in (City) where fans were talking about bidding for a Worldcon. Go find them, I've given you enough clues to get started.

Chaz
My personal website is at http://www.boston-baden.com/hazel/