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DC 2017, Helsinki 2017, Montreal 2017, or Nippon 2017, advocate your preference


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I'm for Helsinki in 2017 and Dublin in 2019. Because they're both closer to home than any US city.


Bought friends membership things for both at Loncon.


Got a chara ribbon from the Dublin bid and a t-shirt from the Helsinki people. :)

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Cool, there are pluses and minuses to every location, but they overall seem like great locations!



Being in LA, Helsinki is probably the biggest PITA to get to, although would be a cool place to do it. DC is boiling hot (although I can get work to pay for half my trip, hehe). Japan is a pain to get to from Europe and east coast US (pretty easy for me though), but I love Japan. Montreal would be a fantastic location during the summer. So for purely selfish reasons, I'm voting for anything but Helsinki!



I'd probably even consider bringing the kids to DC or Montreal!


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2011: USA.

2012: USA.

2013: USA.

2014: Britain.

2015: USA.

2016: USA.

The only two 2018 bids of which I am aware are USA too (New Orleans and San Jose).

IIRC 2017 is a westbound TAFF year. That's the only downside I can see to Helsinki.

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2011: USA.

2012: USA.

2013: USA.

2014: Britain.

2015: USA.

2016: USA.

The only two 2018 bids of which I am aware are USA too (New Orleans and San Jose).

IIRC 2017 is a westbound TAFF year. That's the only downside I can see to Helsinki.

Ah my favorite talking point... that is such a pretty data slicing exercise... let's take a look at a slightly longer time frame... 20 years:

1994: Winnipeg, Canada

1995: Glasgow, UK

1996: Anaheim, CA

1997: San Antonio, TX

1998: Baltimore, MD

1999: Melbourne, Australia

2000: Chicago, IL

2001: Philadelphia, PA

2002: San Jose, CA

2003: Toronto, Canada

2004: Boston, MA

2005: Glasgow, UK

2006: Anaheim, CA

2007: Yokohama, Japan

2008: Denver, CO

2009: Montreal, Canada

2010: Melbourne, Australia

2011: Reno, NV

2012: Chicago, IL

2013: San Antonio, TX

2014: London, UK

2015: Spokane, WA

2016: Kansas City, MO

When you look at the longer list, nearly half of the Worldcons have been Non-US locations. I see a couple of runs where there are three US locations in consecutive years. As 2018, is still early, there could be an non-US bid that develops. When you see the three consecutive years note west coast, central US, and East Coast.

Washington DC is a tier 1 city with a great offer from the site and city support.

EDIT: Prior to this period though there appears to have been some longer cycles with only a couple of consecutive non-US locations. See the full list at http://www.smofinfo.com/LL/TheLongList.html

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I think to the rest of the world it seems a little disingenuous to point out the occasions it's been in Canada as being substantially different to it being in the US, purely in terms of travel. How about 'outside North America' instead?



2019 is currently looking to be Belfast, so I very much doubt 2018 will be outside NA.



I fail to see what the issue with 50% of Worldcons being outside NA would be. 2017 is a good time to start the one off, one on pattern!


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I think to the rest of the world it seems a little disingenuous to point out the occasions it's been in Canada as being substantially different to it being in the US, purely in terms of travel. How about 'outside North America' instead?

2019 is currently looking to be Belfast, so I very much doubt 2018 will be outside NA.

I fail to see what the issue with 50% of Worldcons being outside NA would be. 2017 is a good time to start the one off, one on pattern!

I won't speak to claiming the Canada is no different than the US. Won't touch that with a ten foot pole.

When you look forward, there are numerous bids outside of NA. There are the listed ones in New Zealand, Dublin, and Paris. I've heard rumblings that there is a Brazilian group gaining con running experience for some time after 2020.

Several years ago, there was a proposal to do just what you suggest, alternate between US and non-US locations. The non-US contingent killed it. I don't know the specifics on why, just that it was pushed by US based fans in a US city and killed by fans at a non-US site the next year.

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I think to the rest of the world it seems a little disingenuous to point out the occasions it's been in Canada as being substantially different to it being in the US, purely in terms of travel. How about 'outside North America' instead?

2019 is currently looking to be Belfast, so I very much doubt 2018 will be outside NA.

I fail to see what the issue with 50% of Worldcons being outside NA would be. 2017 is a good time to start the one off, one on pattern!

Belfast have a bid? Did you mean Dublin? :P I hope it is, but 2019 is a long way away. I think there will be strong competition, whether Helsinki win or lose. (If they win, people will whinge about two non-NA cons in such close proximity, and/or some of the other 2017 bids might move to 2019; if they lose, they might decide to throw their hats in the ring one more time. It sounds like Beijing plan to keep bidding until they win, too.)

As for killing the on/off pattern, I think it's because there was no guarantee that there were enough groups (on either side, though particularly the non-NA/non-US side) to actually put together a Worldcon every other year. They also wanted the flexibility to choose their own years, etc, rather than slot into a particular schedule. The zone restrictions have been dispensed with for similar reasons, I think.

Edit: Apparently 1970's Worldcon was held in West Germany, and 1990's was in the Netherlands. But it's predominantly the UK, for sure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Worldcons

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Yeah, sorry - Dublin, not Belfast. I have Titancon on the brain.



Arlingzen Bill: if you read what I wrote, I said that travelling to the US or Canada makes no difference for those outside of the US. I didn't say they were the same place. As for 'several years ago', maybe that needs to be revisited?

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Since the first non-NA bid at WorldCon 15 (LonCon 1), the average time between non-NA WorldCons is 3.5 years. So if the next time is 2019, that would be more or less normal. I don't know if that's due to tradition (since WorldCon originated in the U.S. and was in NA for the first 14 years) or because there are more English-speaking SciFi/Fantasy fans in NA.



Or maybe it's because the exchange rate for the US dollar/Canadian dollar is so bad that we can only afford to leave once every 3.5 years. :P


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Yeah, sorry - Dublin, not Belfast. I have Titancon on the brain.

Arlingzen Bill: if you read what I wrote, I said that travelling to the US or Canada makes no difference for those outside of the US. I didn't say they were the same place. As for 'several years ago', maybe that needs to be revisited?

I misread it, but it is still quite different for commonwealth members travelling. For non-commonwealth travelers it is still probably easier to get into Canada than the US post 9-11.

I would oppose that type of change unless it was to not visit the same city, 50 mile exclusion zone, for 20 years.

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I've heard that NYC is too insanely expensive for a fan run con the size of Worldcon.

I've thought that a 100th Worldcon in NYC would be interesting, but that it would take community effort to do it at a reasonable cost. I would expect the need to start sending some pass along funds into a WSFS account in preparation for it to offset the costs.

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for us "non-commonwealth" people, the US is slightly more paranoid and requires visas and stuff (though not for western Europeans) but on arrival I was never questioned in the US while the Canadians were a tiiiiny bit suspicious. However in terms of flight availability and cost there is not much difference, which I think Targh's point was rather than paperwork.


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