FF:VIC Adelaide's Star Wars convention August 23 - 2008

We welcome Star Wars fans to Adelaide this coming August 23 for the big event.

http://www.terra-novaevents.com

For full event information.

Be amongst the first Star Wars fans in Australia to have a copy of the latest Star Wars story..
The Force Unleashed!

Thats right ..we have secured advanced copies of the book, not yet for sale in Australia and they will be available only at the convention and you will be able to have your book signed the the Author.. Mr Sean Williams - one of our featured guests.

Sean has been sworn to secrecy about the story and will be able to finally tell all to fans attending the Adelaide convention.

What makes Star Wars better than Star Trek?
Well, you'll find out at the convention as we contest this Great Debate as part of the convention.

Want to be a part of the Star Wars team with Sean Williams..

Opposing team captain will be Star Trek Deep Space Nine's Aron Eisenberg "Nog"

Join us is Adelaide for a fantastic three days of activities.

Special group rate for five ore more fans travelling in for the event!

All the best

Stuart Blair
Terra Nova Events
http://www.terra-novaevents.com
http://www.myspace.com/terranovaevents

 

A spoon full of convention helps the fandom go down
helps the fandom go down

 

When I read the topic of this post I thought "wow, someone else in the country is finally running a fan run/fan focused SW convention other than Star Walking" keeping in mind the last non SWI fan run convention was in 2002 in Qld - which is another story.

Be good to see the old style fan run cons back again.

 

The guys from the SAFF are working on another event at the moment....BRING EM ON I say.

 

I think the concept of fan run MEDIA conventions are practically a thing of the past (I have to say Media as there are still fan run Litrature cons about the place).

I know that SAFF has a bit of a community in action over there who are big into costuming, so if they opt to run a convention of some type then best of luck to them, so long as it's not a thinly disguised professional "convention".

Unfortunately these days people blur the lines between fan run and pro conventions. To clear up the definition, a fan run convention should at the very least:
* NOT be dominated by the GoH
* Should have at least two programming strands (talks, quizzes, games) that are run JUST by the fans
* Have at least one video programme

Bonus points are awarded if...
* A costume parade is held
* A banquet is held
* There is an artshow
* The video programme runs for 24 hours

As a matter of interest, the last fan run media sci-fi convention held in SA was in 1992.

 

GoH?

 

GoH is short-hand for the Grunts of Hatred; an insurrectionist movement first formed as a moralist movement committed to opposing the antipodean classic "An Andalusian Dog".

They saw the potential for decay amongst the youth of the 1970s due to the lack of structured narrative and the themes of lechery and unChristian sentiment.

Slowly finding their audience for such outrage had dimmed, they turned their focus from cinema to new and emerging franchises with the potential for inncidenary moral ramification: namely science fiction and fantasy.

Tolkien recieved the early wrath of the Grunts of Hatred before the success of Star Wars forced them into a battle-stations panic strategy: to best control the evil of such a franchise they'd have to control it.

They began running conventions as a way to "re-educate" fans, but fans were quick to that gibe and began to form their own conventions. As a last resort, many GoH adherents have been spotted on balconies sharpening their razors.

The moon is obscured. Keep your eyes closed.

 

Ooops, I forget there are fandom newbies here.

Here's some quick, old school fan education for you.

* GoH = Guest of Honour
* FGoH = Fan Guest of Honour
* BNF = Big Name Fan
* Natcon = National Science Fiction Convention or National Media Science Fiction Convention (The SA con in 1992 was the Nat Media Con for that year)
* Worldcon = World Science Fiction Convention (Australia is running this in 2010 in Melbourne)

The concept of Natcons (and Worldcons) is like the Olympics. You put in a bid at the current Natcon to run the Natcon in the future and everyone votes on it. In the 1992 case, the convention was called Hongcon.

Media Natcon's had two main "theoretical" advantages (I say theoretical as Number 1 didn't always apply)
1) If people were going to attend one convention in the year, the Natcon would usually be it
2) The Natcon's were able to host the ASFMA awards (Australian Science Fiction Media Awards) which were like Logies awarded to fans.

Natcons also received some financial boost from the Australian Science Fiction Foundation.

So where are they now?

Nat Media cons dried up in the mid 90s as people stopped running them. Ironically between 1985 and 1995 the Media cons had the biggest attendance and the largest public profile, but in the words of Dr. Tyrell in Blade Runner
"The candle that burns twice as bright burns only half as long" and that's what happened to the Nat Media cons. The only remaining "generic" media cons were being run by Multiverse and they finished up a few years ago.

At the end of the Nat Media con reign in 1995, one convention bid and won the right to host BOTH Natcons at the same event. Unfortunately by this time Nat Media cons were a dying breed and I don't recall there being one the following year.

Natcons for Litrature are still ongoing.

And just finally, Star Walking put in two Nat Media con bids in 1989 and 1993 and lost both times. After that we opted to run our own dedicated SW cons with our own awards and left the Nat Media cons to themselves.

 

Oh, yeah, well...that's the "official" explaination I suppose...

 

I liked your better PoT.

 

there always has to be room for the individual to express themselves