Convention Odyssey: A Slightly Insane Project Proposal.

Here’s an idea: A video blog about conventions of all sorts. Interviews, panel excerpts, and explanatory segments about how cons work. At a convention every weekend. For a year.

I’d like to try it.

Why?

Because wouldn’t it be neat to put on a positive display of the entire range of fandom for once? Because we’re all tired of fandom being boxed into the mass-media nerd stereotype. Because of Heroes of Cosplay if you’re into anime, or the GAME_JAM debacle if you’re into video games, or that episode of CSI if you’re a furry fan.  Because TV writers have been to one San Diego Comic-Con and think that’s what every convention in the world is like. Because that paper you read went to a local convention once and it phrased the entire article in the form of jokes about young men living in their mom’s basements watching Star Trek because it doesn’t even know that organized media fandom is mostly female.

Because no one knows every nook and cranny of fandom. Quick, can you name the largest sf/horror film festival out there? The con that selects its Guest of Honor from its members at random? The one that’s been going camping for 20 years? One devoted exclusively to art? The one about comics and really nothing else but comics? The one with a Book of Honor instead of a GoH?

Because mundane politics have been getting louder and louder in fandom lately, and it would be nice to have a reminder that we talk of fandom as a singular entity because we’re all in this because of what we have in common. Because we’re all fascinated by the fantastic and looking toward to the future when we’re not distracted by the screaming caricatures that social media can turn us all into. Because we can still sit down and have a friendly discussion about that new idea for powering spaceships, or the latest episode of that show a bunch of people are watching, regardless of which party the other person voted for the other day.

Convention OdysseyAll of that is what this project, which I’m calling Convention Odyssey, is about. The Indiegogo donations page is here. There’s a Facebook page here with ongoing updates and highlights from the test blog. Or you can see the test blog itself, which I put together across three conventions to try out the logistical and technical aspects of the project, and which as a result is a mixture of the aforementioned highlights and posts that might as well have titles like “That Awkward Moment When I Realized That a Monopod Plus Steadicam Do Not Substitute That Well For an Actual Tripod”.

I’m a lifelong fan of sf in all its forms, and I’ve been very lucky to be able to attend cons since I was too young to remember. I would like to do this for the community that has always been there for me.

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2 Comments

  1. This seems like a great idea. Best of luck with the Kickstarter. It might also be good to pull stories from others who go to cons you can’t make. For instance, I’ll be at Balticon this weekend and hope to post about it here (and maybe on Storify). That way you don’t have to do all the work yourself (although I’m sure that will be most of the fun!). I might open up the dead line a little too. A month seems a little quick for the amount of money your hoping to raise.

    Otherwise, off to a great start!

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