R.I.P. DACON

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Nursewhen
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Re: R.I.P. DACON

Here's the asylum link

http://steampunk.synthasite.com/

It was indeed a spectacular event last year and probably will be even better this year.

Unfortunately I can't go this year as it clashes with Doctor When performing as William Burgess at Cardiff Castle.

a_random_me
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Re: R.I.P. DACON

Tis a shame, I will unbook the days off work, and see everybody at the inevitable alternative event.

Doctor
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Re: R.I.P. DACON

I'm sure the club will survive, but perhaps a few small changes could be made to help things along:

i) a new, simpler name, like, oh, off the top of my head maybe "Sproutlore" - has the right sort of ring to it.
ii) i can't think of anything else just now...

I would have loved to have been being at Da'Con (or NoDa'Con, or NoBa'Con, or YoDa'Con, or whatever) but weekends off cost me dearly in lost pay, as do single hotel rooms, what with the bin lids being too tiny to travel much even with mummy.

The best of luck to all from here at zz9!
Reg x / Richard / etc.

(zz9 being much shorter than our full, silly title...)

ps. Did you know there was a recession on?

Deep Black
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Re: R.I.P. DACON

Real shame about the con, though I admit to being anothe non attendee. The expence in both time & money makes whole weekend away difficult to organise. We have to be very selective & plan far ahead. Even then the "little one" can upset the apple cart.

As for the club itself, keep up the good work. & maybe aim at the smaller pub based events. A one day book launch sounds good to me & is much easier to attend...

Nursewhen
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Re: R.I.P. DACON

Grand Master wrote:
I will be having a meeting with Ian some time soon to discuss what future, if any, this club has. I fear perhaps its days are numbered.
Your thoughts?

Actually, I do have some thoughts and I apologise in advance because they might not be popular.

It seems to me that this was a large club but then became a small club but is still being run like a large club.

I think growing numbers is more important at the moment than growing revenue (though this may be tricky at present as I imagine there are post DACON expenses to recover). So here are my thoughts.

1. Open up the forum. At present, anybody who has read one of Robert's books and pops by out of curiosity hits a brick wall as they find they can't get access to Robert or even socialise with his fans without having to lay down money.
The enjoyment you can get out of any forum is directly proportional to the number of people on it and it seems to me that the number of people on the forum is falling all the time.
Also, should any club member lose their job amd can't afford the subscriptions they also get kicked off the forum. Doesn't seem fair to me.
I'd rather see more of people on the forum and snare them into the club using our charm and humour rather than expecting them to make a leap in the dark.

2. Subscription - what's it for? I imagine the main use of the subsciption is for the magazine. Can it be made into an online magazine only available to club members? That will cut subscription costs.

It's also used to subsidise events. Well as Deep said above, smaller events are easier to attend as they take up less time and money. Also, the smaller events I've been to like the fancy dress hunt for Large in Derby, the trip to the Manchester science museum, the Ripper walk and the tiny trip to the steam punk exhibition were a blast and cost the club nothing. (I assume the ripper walk room was payed for on the day rather than being subsidised?)

So there are my thoughts. Feel free to shoot me down in flames Eye-wink

captain.fantastic
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Re: R.I.P. DACON

I welcome this sort of feedback Helen, no that's a lie, I actively encourage it:) The club is FOR fans of Robert and therefore what it does and how it does it should reflect the needs of those fans insofar as it can.

You raise some interesting points, the first one, which is contentious, is the opening of the website and forum to all-comers. It was felt that having one area of the forum open to non-paid up members was enough to allow interested passers-by to join in discussions but the locking of the rest gave full membership some tangible and measurable effect that happened instantly on joining. One option that comes to mind is maybe to open up more of the forum but still have at least one locked area purely for members....?

Size of the club - A difficult one this, the club is niether bigger nor smaller on average than it ever has been..... yes it has had larger member numbers but by reflection it has had smaller... Personally I would love to see it grow but am at a loss on how to do this.

Membership costs and the magazine go hand in hand, as you quite rightly state. Very little membership money goes into subsidising events (so little it could be counted as nil) the extra revenue is mostly raised via merchandise sales through the club shop. At present the £16 covers the magazine and its P&P and leaves a residue of approximately £0.80 per member per year (not a lot) this is a numbers game as our current membership numbers are at the threshold of magazine production cost - if we produced less it wouldn't cost less and therefore the cost per member would be higher, inversely if we produced more it would increase in cost by a very small amount for the total order and subsequently cost less per member - or to put it simply, if we doubled our membership I could reduce the subscription cost to £10 and have approximately £2 residue for other club stuff. If we quadrupled membership I could charge £8 and have £3 residue for the club and so on. My personal ambition has always to reach 1000 members (and when you consider we have many more than that signed up to the website but not paid up members it's not unfeasible) at which point I could charge a measly £5 membership (less than when the magazine was black and white) and still have money left over!!

This of course brings me to the online magazine idea, it's a good one and it was kicked around at the meeting to found Golden Sprout. There are draw backs, some of the club members, well at least half, would prefer the printed magazine and something real you can take to the bathroom to read dropping through the letterbox every three months, do we dissappoint these members and risk losing them? Alternatively do we offer a two tier membership system, online or printed, at two prices? This would seem the ideal solution but again there is a snag....

If half the club opts for the magazine and half for online and we price at two levels, £16 and £8 for example, then the magazine production cost doesn't decrease (as I said earlier, our numbers are at the tipping point for print run costs) and we lose money! Do I raise the magazine subscribers costs? £20 maybe, and the online ones, £12 maybe, now the sums will work just but will either party be happy? The magazine subscibers see a price hike and the online subscribers are subsidising the cost of the magazine!

A real can of worms this running a club thing :O

I would like to keep all the people happy all the time but am enough of a realist to know this isn't possible Sad

It's over to you guys and gals - the debate is open, and I will expand on this in the up-coming magazine (going to print in the next 5 days). It's YOUR club - how should it be run, how do we get more members, how do we reduce costs, what about the magazine and subscriptions? give me your feedback and your ideas and lets move this club forward together (god, now I sound like Clegaron)......

It's a shame Da'con didn't happen, I had hoped that there would be enough of the "core" membership (you know who you are, and no insult meant to the more casual member, you are all valued) that we could have had a club meeting to discuss these things face to face as we did when launching Golden Sprout (when I got suckered, sorry, when I enthusiastically volunteered, to run the club Eye-wink ) ......

Ian.

 

Nursewhen
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Re: R.I.P. DACON

Thanks for that, Ian,

I personally don't have a problem with either the subscription or the format of the magazine, I was just adding ideas to the pot.

The forum is the thing thing that I do have issues with, especially as I know that I would never have joined the club, had I drifted by when it was in a locked down state.

(P.S. That's not a cue to say "Darn, should've locked it down sooner.")

Sticking out tongue Laughing out loud

captain.fantastic
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Re: R.I.P. DACON

Darn, should've locked it down sooner

:P

Deep Black
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Re: R.I.P. DACON

Quote:
One option that comes to mind is maybe to open up more of the forum but still have at least one locked area purely for members....?

It was like that on the old forum & non of us ever used the private members bit.

How about the site itself. The main page seem to be lacking in regular updates. & with the forum being mostly locked out, people drifting through could think not a lot is going on...

Bryanp1973
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Re: R.I.P. DACON

Very sad that Dacon has been cancelled but guess people were watching the pennies and this weekend was too much to lay out.

I'm sure the OOTGS can survive this and as has been suggested organise smaller events where we can meet up and talk toot. Not sure the forum is an issue as I'd imagine if you were visiting the site you'd want to join to get the magazine and access to the member forum. Casual visitors are just that, people who like RR and wish to communicate with fellow RR fans but not wanting to join up for the full package. I've always thought the membership was good value and the magazines an interesting read so happy with them as they are but an electronic copy sent by pdf would not be a massive thing for me as could read on my phone/pc and if it keeps cost's down then happy to go electronic.

I'm hoping to make the Film and comic con so hopefully see some of you there and looking forward to whatever can be organised for the new book launch.

There that's my two penneth.

Bryan