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


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Really cos I

Pebble,

But I could hit vital sensitive areas. I've simply never had a desire to do that.

;)

Really? I used to get those kind of impulses*, but have learnt to channel them into hugging people instead.

Whats a moomin?

*actually I only normally get those impulses when someone really deserves them first. funnily enough in resent years they have often combined with public displays of nakedness.

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The Moomin obsessives may win this thread (did either of you get to the Moomin shop in Covent Garden?), if not the location competition, because Moominness. There's a store in Helsinki airport, and Moomin World a couple of hours' drive from Helsinki. That said, it really depends on the quality of the bids and well the bidding groups put them together. DC is probably lovely, Montreal is still part of Canada, Japan would be cool as would Helsinki. Not everyone is going to be able to make Worldcon every year: the biggest problem for someone like me is the insistence on the Labour Day weekend, right before school starts. Switching it to match Canadian Thanksgiving in October would be perfect. ;)


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The Moomin obsessives may win this thread (did either of you get to the Moomin shop in Covent Garden?),

I did not make it to the Moomin shop, or indeed either of the presentations at LonCon about the life and impact of Tove Jansson. Waterstones did have a full window display at their flagship store in Piccadilly, of which I got a snap (pics on Facebook at some point this week).

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The Moomin obsessives may win this thread (did either of you get to the Moomin shop in Covent Garden?), if not the location competition, because Moominness. There's a store in Helsinki airport, and Moomin World a couple of hours' drive from Helsinki. That said, it really depends on the quality of the bids and well the bidding groups put them together. DC is probably lovely, Montreal is still part of Canada, Japan would be cool as would Helsinki. Not everyone is going to be able to make Worldcon every year: the biggest problem for someone like me is the insistence on the Labour Day weekend, right before school starts. Switching it to match Canadian Thanksgiving in October would be perfect. ;)

Labor Day weekend effectively rules out British attendees with school age children, as the Monday is almost invariably the first day of the school year and taking one's children out of school for holidays incurs a fine. "I was stuck in the USA" is not a valid excuse. This works against attempts to entice young to middle aged adults and families to the con.

I'm not getting behind the Japan bid simply because of What Went Wrong Last Time. I'm more than happy to hear arguments on how This Time Will Be Different.

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Hey they're in Wales and London. (Of course I believe Wales exists.). Should London have based its bid on the presense of Moomins?

And there are Moomins in DC:

http://www.examiner.com/article/cool-art-exhibit-for-tweens-moomin-comes-to-washington

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2001/05/20/AR2005041402143.html

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The Moomin obsessives may win this thread (did either of you get to the Moomin shop in Covent Garden?), if not the location competition, because Moominness. There's a store in Helsinki airport, and Moomin World a couple of hours' drive from Helsinki. That said, it really depends on the quality of the bids and well the bidding groups put them together. DC is probably lovely, Montreal is still part of Canada, Japan would be cool as would Helsinki. Not everyone is going to be able to make Worldcon every year: the biggest problem for someone like me is the insistence on the Labour Day weekend, right before school starts. Switching it to match Canadian Thanksgiving in October would be perfect. ;)

Insistence on Labor Day? Say what?

The next two Worldcons are not on Labor Day weekend.

Sasquan is August 19-23.

Kansas City is August 17-21.

And, of the four bids for 2017, only one is proposed for Labor Day weekend -- the one in Japan.

The issue with schools starting on or before Labor Day is as much a concern in the US as it is elsewhere. Both colleges and lower-grade schools now tend to start well before Labor Day. (For instance, dormitory move-in for the University of Pennsylvania, just down the street from me, was earlier this week.)

This affects a lot of people. Not just students and their parents, but also everyone who works in academia, whether they be teachers, librarians, or administrators.

And it affects other events as well, not just Worldcons. I've worked as a volunteer on the backstage crew at the annual Philadelphia Folk Festival for nearly fifty years. This event, for most of its life, was held on the weekend before the Labor Day weekend. About five years back, though, the management realized that the increasingly early starts for public schools and colleges was causing two problems: A drop in general attendance PLUS a decrease in the availability of volunteer labor, on which the event depends. So, they moved it a week earlier, where it's been ever since.

(For me, this is a major problem because it now tends to coincide with Worldcon. That will affect my choices as to which Worldcons I attend in the future, at least until I am able to teleport between the two...)

Two other things to consider, from the con-running standpoint:

1) The Labor Day weekend is a very popular one for major non-sf conventions because it allows travel on a long weekend. As a result, both convention centers and hotels are less likely to be available for our needs, especially given that other groups are able to make firm commitments much further in advance. Worldcon, with a two-year election cycle, cannot sign contracts for facilities and hotels until after the Site Selection vote is complete.

2) Many bid committees, especially in the US, are becoming wary of holding a con on Labor Day weekend because that is also the date of Dragon*Con, which affects the availability of both attendees and panelists.

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Hey they're in Wales and London. (Of course I believe Wales exists.). Should London have based its bid on the presense of Moomins?

And there are Moomins in DC:

http://www.examiner.com/article/cool-art-exhibit-for-tweens-moomin-comes-to-washington

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2001/05/20/AR2005041402143.html

what's with the moomins, Ser Scot? I don't think the Helsinki bid website even mentions moomins, so why do you think it is basing the bid on them?

Of course there may be some dozens of hardcore moomin fans for whom it's vital to visit the moomin homeland, but they probably won't have a decisive vote :p

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