Wondering a bit about Nine Worlds' business plan

[major_clanger]

I was initially a bit sceptical when I heard about Nine Worlds (very ambitious plans from a group seemingly without major con-running experience) but saw that the organisers were getting a lot of writers and fans I knew on board and was impressed by some of the ideas they seem to have. So I've joined, as has S, and we look forward to seeing how a fresh attempt at conrunning works.

But... I've had a look at the @worldsnine twitter feed. It does rather look as if they are openly inviting everyone remotely well-known in the geek/sf world who has a twitter account to come along as a guest, including quite a few actors. I take it the organisers do appreciate that when you invite a guest to a convention that person will expect to be accommodated and have their travel paid for - and, if he or she is a pro actor, to get an appearance fee?

I'm just a bit concerned that Nine Worlds already has 23 announced guests and are actively soliciting more, and wondering if they actually have a plan for paying for them all given that the website promises that (unlike the sort of commercial conventions that feature lots of actors) the membership price is all-inclusive and we won't be paying additional fees to see guests.

Comments

[watervole]

I'm considering it myself, though I also have some reservations. I spoke to one of them at Redemption and there's a lot of energy and enthusiasm.

I'd like to know what their cancellation plans are. That's because they're speaking to Richard about using him to book tickets and unlike most commercial ticket agencies, we pay people before the event. That means we would be liable, without having the money ourselves, if the event folded.

So, we'd need to be very certain that they had cancellation insurance and that anyone who booked through us would get their money back or we could be facing major liabilities.

[gaspode.livejournal.com]

I don't think they are paying all the guests as such. I assume they are working on the expenses model. With that number of guests they wont all be around all weekend (I suspect we are looking more at the 'Appearing At' type of guest you get at things like Kapow rather than the Eastercon style guest of honour - that won't apply to everyone - some will be being put up and some may want a fee but not all). Most of them are London based as well so traveling is minimal. Assuming they get the number of attendees they are looking for that kind of model is easily sustainable. They will have to be carefull with some media guests - but others will do it for free - like our Game of Thrones guests did at Olympus.

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

I've seen some of the figures and the basics of the hotel deal, and it doesn't look problematic to me at this point. I believe guests are well aware of what they're being offered, which is fairly basic. The £10k kickstarter figure should provide enough to cover it, and they're well over that already. As a programme head I even have a budget, though it's not very big.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Well, memberships for guests are effectively free, and most of them are London-based so I'm guessing it's just free membership + a bit towards travel and food for the non-actors, and then maybe a bit extra for a couple of big name guests, and possibly if you're randomly asking on twitter you need to ask fifty big names to get the couple who want to come along... Assuming your venue gives you free function space for selling sufficient bedrooms, ten grand should go a reasonable way towards a few big name guests. Although I doubt it will get you Hiddleston.

It's certainly a different way to go about doing this, although it might push problems down the line if you get big and lots of authors want to come and all of them want to be guests, but that's maybe not the worst problem to have.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Cor - if it's free memberships for anyone with a Twitter a/c I will go look :-)

[dougs.livejournal.com]

They were at redemption_con, promoting, and I took some time to encourage them to seek out Eastercon-style conrunners, to sit down with them and have a chat about How Things Work. I really hope that they do so -- there's a substantial community of Eastercon-style conrunners who will be at Bradford, many (most?) of whom are keen to see new people in the field, and are keen to see them succeed. I hereby encourage any conrunners who are approached by these guys to be approachable, encouraging, and helpful.

[gaspode.livejournal.com]

they may well have already done that ;-)

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

I had a long chat with them in the bar at redemption_con, and I think what they are trying is interesting, they have some good ideas and seem to have their heads screwed on. I've supported the Kickstarter.

[janieluk.livejournal.com]

Hey there, I'm one of the core organisers of Nine Worlds. Erich has been spamming invites a bit on the Twitter feed, and I had to glare at him and explain about the etiquette of such things as he's not normally a Twitter user.

We're keeping careful track of what we agree for each guest. We're also barely denting our budget on this front at the moment. If you check out our current guest list, very few of the announced guests require much in the way of travel, and quite a few aren't even in need of their own rooms. We would like one or two reasonably high profile guests from the media end of things, but we're being very careful in how we manage that.

Regarding paying to see guests, I'd recommend reading the FAQ on the Kickstarter entitled 'What's included in the ticket price?'. The ticket will get you into almost everything, including all of the guests announced so far. It's possible we might have a one off session during the con where we sell charity tickets to attend in order to (a) raise money for English PEN and (b) limit numbers, but that would only happen if we got somebody or something incredibly high profile and simply couldn't fit everyone in to see them, and there would be a range of alternative activities taking place at the same time. We may also run a couple of intensive courses alongside the con (e.g. acting or creative writing), which would require a paid instructor for a large chunk of each day and would be charged at cost price to attend.

As a more general point, I can understand that newcomers are often unsettling in any field. I hope that we can allay concerns that people have, and it's encouraging that so many people are being so helpful. There are some ways in which we will run differently to many of the existing cons, and I don't believe that makes us automatically wrong. Hope all that helps, and feel free to give me a shout at dan@nineworlds.co.uk or on Twitter / Kickstarter etc. if you have any questions!

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the clarifications. I thnk you slightly misunderstood our host, though. He wasn't worried about the "newcomers upsetting the field". He was concerned that the newcomers were digging themselves into a hole without realising it and hoped that this wasn't the case. From what you've said, it isn't the case, which is good. We don't like to see non-profit fellow-travellers crash and burn (for-profits are a different matter - as far as I'm concered Dragon*Con could crash and burn quite nicely without worrying me, given the amount of money its profit-making owners make off the backs of volunteer labour).

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Hi, and thanks for taking the time to give a detailed comment.

To begin with I'd like to emphasise that, as a_cubed says, I'm not worried that there are new people coming into convention-running (quite the opposite), nor do I assume that a new approach is wrong. It's just that I do worry a little if people new to any field of activity look like they might be heading for pitfalls that I know have tripped people up before.

The specific concern I have is that there have been instances before of conventions inviting someone to be a guest only to find that the person in question accepts and then treats that as a binding agreement including all sorts of expenses. Even at a relatively small scale this can be awkward; I know of someone involved with a university sf group a fair few years ago who bumped into X, an actor at the time associated with a popular tv SF programme. When it turned out that X was in town X was invited to come along to their next pub meeting, which X did, and everyone had a great time.

The following week X's agent sent them an invoice for X's appearance fee.

I'm a lawyer in my day job and I could probably say quite a bit about how terms of a contract generally need to be agreed, and that an open invitation to appear at a convention is most likely (in strict legal terms) an 'invitation to treat' - i.e. not an offer capable of unconditional acceptance. But there is some legal basis for saying that where the standard terms of an offer are well-known in the community within which it's made, they are implied in to even a very simple offer. This was X's position: everyone in fandom knows that actors charge appearance fees so you implicitly agreed that I could charge a reasonable one. For my own part I had a significant learning experience in dealing with a guest at one event I helped run who assumed that the convention would cover his bar tab - something we only realised when the convention treasurer was presented with it!

From what you and other people here (who I know and trust) are saying it sounds like you have a handle on this, and yes, if most of these guests are coming a short distance to do a one-off programme item then travel and accommodation won't be major expenses. But I would say (and again it sounds as if you've addressed this point) that sending unconditional invites to people who may expect VIP treatment could be risky - perhaps better to say "we'd like to talk to you about being a guest" so making it clear that it's all subject to agreeing the details.

By the way, are you or anyone else from Nine Worlds planning on coming to EightSquaredCon, this year's Eastercon? If so, we'd be very keen to have someone on a panel item we're planning to run about the future of conrunning, as Nine Worlds looks like one of the most interesting developments in this area.

[janieluk.livejournal.com]

It's always helpful to get feedback and suggestions from people, so thanks for talking about us!

We're going to be at Eastercon this year. Happy to discuss more then, and look forward to meeting you!

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

OK - could you drop me a line via prog@eightsquaredcon.org so we can arrange this please?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Quick question - which hotels are you using? Can't seem to find the information on your site

[janieluk.livejournal.com]

Written agreement with Renaissance, verbal agreement with Marriott, negotiating with the Radisson and Park Inn. The quoted room rate is for the Renaissance, but there's potentially some complexity around other hotels' prices that's keeping us back from sending the link out to people who've pledged on the Kickstarter. We'll be sending it soon, and there are enough rooms that booking won't be a particularly frenetic affair.

[janieluk.livejournal.com]

Whoa there! OK, it looks like we're going to be able to change the hotel offering a bit, in a good way. Will send an update to Kickstarter backers soon.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Having run a couple of festivals myself, I know what many of the bands on the scene happen to charge. It's now a reflex habit for any newly announced festival to look at venue size, ticket price, lineup and to do a quick cashflow forecast for it. Some would have to be described as "optimistic".

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The membership price looks a bit high (e.g. £65 for three days if I sign up now, more if I join later) but not totally out of line given what they're offering. Anyone got any idea of hotel room rates for this?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Sorry, never mind - £80 for a single. Not wonderful, but I'd only need to stay two nights. I could even commute it every day. But I'd really like to know which hotels they're using and it doesn't say.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

The Renaissance, I think? If you don't mind not being on site, there's a Travelodge down the road I've stayed in which is fine and usually dead cheap.

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

£65 is not really out of line. The price of a con can vary a lot depending on the cost base. Cons like Eastercon and Novacon have had decades of working out how to do it fairly cheaply, but even squeezing the budget as best we can Redemption has a weekend rate that starts off at £55 for the first few weeks then rises to £65, then £70, then £75 on the door. SciFi Weekender goes all the way up to £1280, though that does include accommodation and gets you an 8 person chalet for 3 nights. A regular weekend ticket at Starfury Serenity Forever is £90 (with some memberships types considerably more) and that is in the same Renaissance Hotel in Heathrow.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

To Simon - I'm almost inclined to sign up with these people because they have the best cookie opt in policy and expianation I have yet seen #sdbastard.
Actually a London con in August is q tempting. I miss summer cons - nov and Easter are about my busiest work times of the year..