FanWorks 2023: October 6th - 8th, Online
Hello!
This is a long delayed update on FanWorks 2023 – our apologies! We didn't intend to leave the con's status a mystery for so long, but life has been very exciting for con staff.
We'll go into some detail here about what's been going on since the last con and what will be happening this year. The key information is:
- The next FanWorks con will be fully virtual October 6th – 8th, 2023.
- The October virtual con will be free to attend, with optional donations to help us cover operating costs.
- There will be no in-person FanWorks con this year.
- Returning to annual in-person cons remains a priority for us. We're focusing on getting back in-person next year, but at this point we can't guarantee that will happen.
More details:
Virtual FanWorks: October 6th – 8th, 2023
The virtual con will follow past formats, taking place primarily on Discord, Zoom, and the FanWorks website.
Registration
We want to hold open floor discussions about the future of FanWorks during the October con. To allow as many people to participate in those discussions as possible, we're making the virtual con free to attend.
Because virtual cons still have operating costs (including paid Zoom features, transcription, and so on), and the broader con org has ongoing annual costs to keep the LLC running, registration will include an option to make a donation to FanWorks. Donations help FanWorks continue in years when there is no in-person con to absorb the cost of annual overheads.
Programming
Like past virtual FanWorks cons, programming will be a mix of panels, activities, and vidshows.
Panels will, as always, be a mix of topics across our main programming tracks (Art, Audio, Community, Writing, and Video). This depends on attendees submitting panel topics, so get ready to brainstorm fanwork panels!
Vidshows will include vidder-submitted shows like Premieres, Year in Vids, and one or more themed shows (themes tbd), in addition to curated vidshows put together by attending VJs.
Deadlines for submitting panel topics, vidshow themes, and fanvids will be announced later this week. Expect vidshow theme submission deadlines in July, panel submission deadlines in August, and fanvid submission deadlines in August and mid-September.
In-Person Con Planning
At the end of last year's con, we felt confident that we wanted to return to in-person events this year. Unfortunately, our hotel search, which began immediately following FanWorks 2022, did not produce any options we felt were viable for 2023.
We're looking ahead to 2024 to conduct an expanded search, and to consider possible variations on the weekend format and ways we might bring back Sparkle Motion in as safe a way as we can.
Some details on what we were looking for, what we did or didn't find, and where we're at right now:
- We decided not to return to the SpringHill O'Hare this year for a number of reasons. We haven't ruled out returning there in the future, but for now, we're holding out for a location better suited to our specific needs.
- Based on our con exit surveys in 2022, the two key things we prioritized in our hotel search for 2023 were overall affordability and outdoor social space. We looked at affordability first.
Other things that were high on our list included hotels with nearby restaurants, proximity to major airports, and hotels with set-ups that would allow us to do Sparkle Motion outdoors or in ballrooms with doors to outside patios / terraces.
We also prioritized staying in Chicago, though we did additional searches in the Minneapolis and Metro Detroit areas. - Predictably, we found a lot of hotels that ticked every box on our list but affordability. We ultimately focused on affordability with a willingness to be flexible on room set-up / con format.
- One major change we wanted to make for this year was to do away with the room block, as it's riskier now for the con to financially guarantee hotel rooms than it was in the pre-pandemic era.
(Most of the hotel rooms in our contracted room block have to be booked and paid for by attendees, or else the con is financially liable for them. That can be quite a stressful part of con budgeting these days, and we were hoping to not have to do that anymore.)
We learned pretty quickly that without a room block, we were going to have a much harder time securing a contract at all, so we tried doing a minimum room block; even then, price quotes were much higher than what we used to get. Even with a standard room block attached, our lowest price quote more than doubled the amount of our previous contract. - It's been our experience over the last few years, in planning leading up to 2022 and in the hotel search afterward, that the overall cost of hotel event space has gone up considerably.
One hotel we had fairly advanced conversations with had a catering menu where the most basic lunch started at $40/plate; another hotel wanted $19,000 + (individual fees for each event room) + taxes + fees for one dividable ballroom and a side room. One would only give us rooms until 5pm in an effort to double-book the space; one told us outright that they don't do groups our size anymore.
How to handle the increasing costs of hotel space without a significant rise in con membership pricing is an open question, and wanting to take the time to figure out a long-term solution to that question is a key reason we decided not to do an in-person con this year. - A complicating factor in contract affordability: there have been some overall shifts at major hotel chains away from sales teams in-house, and toward contract managers that handle multiple hotels in a chain. During the pandemic, many hotels we've worked with or negotiated with in the past have lost some or all of their on-site sales teams, which has significantly impacted our ability to build ongoing contacts at hotels.
(As one concrete example of this: the con hotel's events sales manager, the person running our event, changed during the FanWorks 2022 con weekend itself. The person we started with was not the person we ended the weekend with.) - We ultimately weren't able to find anything affordable that met our needs. We decided that the best choice for this year was to keep searching for a hotel for 2024, to give us time to expand our search to other metro areas and consider possible variations on the in-person con format that might help us adapt to the circumstances.
(The extra time will also be helpful for several members of con staff with major life changes, particularly staff with infants! We've had quite the baby boom over the last year.)
What's Next
Here are the next steps you can expect from us:
- We'll be announcing deadlines for panel, vidshow, and vid submissions for the October virtual con later this week.
- Registration for the virtual con will open in July. Again, registration will be free for all attendees, with an option to donate to FanWorks to help cover operating costs.
- Also in July, we'll be putting out a preliminary survey on 2024 con planning. That survey will be used to guide conversations on the future of FanWorks at the October con, and will gather information like:
- Suggestions for other metro areas to search
- A re-evaluation of attendee needs and priorities
- Opinions on possible format shifts and other ideas we've had for adjusting the con in small ways to stay affordable
If You Have Questions or Feedback
We realize it may be difficult to reach us at the moment as we have so many staff members who aren't actively available for childcare, life event, health and other reasons.
We apologize if we've missed anything between cons; if you sent us a message you want a reply to and didn't hear back, please write us at fanworkscon@gmail.com, where several staff members will be monitoring for messages from this point forward.
Where To Find Con Updates
Announcement posts will always be here on the FanWorks blog. Those posts will be linked on Dreamwidth (rather than fully mirrored).
Planning posts requiring discussion (like programming brainstorming posts) will, for now, continue to be on the fanworkscon Dreamwidth, and will be cross-linked here on the blog.
You can subscribe to the FanWorks blog to get an email any time a con update is posted. To do this, go to your account profile page when logged in: https://fanworkscon.com/change/profile/ and tick the box that says "I would like to receive an email when new blog entries are posted."
The fanworkscon Twitter and fanworkscon Tumblr will have links to all announcements and planning posts, reminders about deadlines and upcoming events, and retweets/reblogs of con-related posts (e.g. panel planning, premiering vid posts, etc.).
From time to time, we may also send out informational emails to people with past and present con memberships. If you don't want these emails, you can opt out of them on the account profile page by unticking the box that says "I would like to receive emails about FanWorks."
(Unticking this box does not opt you out of the con weekend info packet for registered attendees, which will be sent to everyone registered for the con as of Thursday, October 5th.)
We encourage all con attendees who already have website accounts to double-check your registered email address to make sure it's up to date prior to the con weekend.
That's it for now! More info to come this week, and we're looking forward to seeing all of you in October.