AussieCon4 was held at the Melbourne Convention & Entertainment Centre (MCEC) from 2nd-6th Sept 2010, in theory the premier event for science fiction fans around the world. New fans and old were presented with a rich choice of panels and activities over the five days of the Con.
The world science fiction convention 2010
The facilities were excellent apart from one huge waste. Thousands of people from around the world were gathered in one place at enormous carbon expense. But the enormously rich content from the minds of the collected leading lights of literature and fandom was wasted to an extravagant extent.
The 10 hours approx each day of panel talks, presentations and discussions were allowed to live briefly before they faded into the ether, the first minute evaporating before the second was delivered. This didn’t occur just once each day but at up to FIFTEEN times each hour at the contemporaneous panels.
So around 150 hours of fabulous content was created and crafted each day, then mindlessly allowed to trickle through the enormous gaps of readily available but shockingly unused technology.
This was the 68th year of a SCIENCE fiction convention! The con was held AWAY from 99.99% of the population of the planet! Yet EVERY word spoken and even every image used could have been captured for, at the LEAST, a podcast! WTF fandom! Why this diabolical WASTE!
Even the most perverse dystopia wouldn’t countenance such short-sightedness being perpetrated by assembled geekdom!
MCEC intelligent lectern
This stupendous lack was irritating at the MICRO level as it prevented interested and committed fans – some having travelled thousand of miles – from accessing content from two or three or even four panel discussions, often in ADJOINING rooms on a single floor of a supposedly high-tech venue!
At the MACRO level the 2 or 3 or up to 6 panelists presented around 1,000 hours of rich, mostly unique and definitely VALUABLE thought which was allowed to decay instantly apart from within the minds of just 20 to 50 to 100 attendees! WTF fandom!
SCIENCE fiction? SPECULATIVE fiction? MIND fiction? Sorry fandom but this was MINDLESS waste! Either the technology was there and ignored, or it should have been adapted to provide, at the minimum, a capture of all panel content to use in podcasts and/or streaming.
Steampunk, even, would be able to capture and provide universal access to these lost treasures of thought! The new millennium of fandom, post-2001, has no Odyssey journal to speak of and not even a SINGLE collection of thought – on paper or audio or video – from the live events! WTF FANDOM!
Who? Where? When? What? No-one will ever know!
The sparkling diamonds of thought from fantasy authors, agents and fans (AAFs) are lost, needlessly wasted alongside the depth of knowledge and commentary that was delivered.
The sharp, finely-honed discussions from science and/or speculative fiction AAFs vanished faster than the speed of light.
The new generation, aka the talented and challenging YA spec fic AAFs, came and delivered and must have watched in amazement as their golden words suffered a half-life of nano seconds. YA expertise at the convention came from many, including Bec Kavanagh, Zoe Walton, Kate Forsyth and Helen Merrick.
Meanwhile, in another room, not that you’ll be able to see or hear, assembled fan luminaries are angry at the LACK OF ACCESS to older print-based fanzines and other types of documentation and memorabilia from decades past!
Even at the celeb level there must have been some frustration that a person sitting on a panel would be unable to hear a transcript of another panel, in many cases with valuable content delivered by their peers or even colleagues.
W T F F A N D O M !
noumenon2 