Lickie's Best Weekend (that almost wasn't)

[Delvie]

Over the weekend, Lickie went to hang out in Burbank w/ fellow browncoats & other Firefly/Serenity fans.
There was a convention (FLANvention) planned by a company called Booster Events. This was limited ticket convention that cost many people into 4 digits for dinners, meet-n-greets, autographs, photo-ops, etc. All events for the weekend were sold out months ago making Booster Events a pretty penny. W/ a month to go before the con, Nathan Fillion had planted the seeds w/ his fans that even though he had accepted the terms of agreement to come to the con, nobody from Booster Events had contacted him to confirm. Everybody immidiately went into a tizzy & started bombarding Booster Events about it. Supposedly, everything was taken care of & Lickie & other the fans were excited, again. Suddenly, a week & a half ago, Booster Events put up a notice on their website that the convention was likely going to be canceled. Everybody started freaking & wanting to know where all the money went. Booster Events immediately blamed the fans & their chatter about Nathan appearance almost being debacled (sp?), implying that the fans scared away the backers. Qois? Anyway, after a few days, supposedly they found a backer & everything was back on & everybody would get an explaination after the con on what went wrong. (& that's not shifty?) Lickie & everybody was happy, but by that time, they had planned on going to Cali anyway & having a huge browncoat get together & all fans were welcome. On Thursday, once again, Booster Events website says that the con was canceled. By this time, attendees had already left OZ, Europe & Hong Kong. Most attendees say screw it on Thursday & go anyway to party w/ their buddies. Anyway, impromptu browncoat party is back on & even people who weren't attending donated money to help their friends out. (By Saturday Morning, over $4500 had been paypaled to the Browncoats by fellow fans from around the world& even more on sunday). The fans immediately started planning an improptu convention bringing in fan favorite bands, etc & renting the hotel ballrooms that had origianlly been planned for the convention. Joss Whedon got last minute approval from Universal for the fans to put it together.

Thursday night @ the bar, Adam Baldwin, knowing that all the fans had been shafted shows up on his own to hang out w/ everybody.  He tells the browncoats to be ready @ a certain time on Friday.

On Friday, many of the cast showed up @ the hotel (w/out compensation) for photo-ops & signings & to hang out w/ the fans. Adam & Joss Whedon had called everybody & people from various other Whedon projects (Buffy, Veronica Mars, etc) eventually showed up.  

On saturday, more of the same. Dark Horse, who was origianlly supposed to be @ the canceled convention, sent out representatives (DH is supposedly doing the new Serenity comics). A gaming company that is going to be releasing a Firefly/Serenity game paid for bus transportation for everybody to a mysterious restaurant/club. Some people donated a stretch Hummer to cart Lickie & the crash organizers to a restaurant. As it turns out, the restaurant is owned by Claire Kramer (Glory on Buffy & also in D.E.B.S. as well as other movies & tv shows) & wasn't supposed to open for 2 weeks, but was opened for the fans. The restaurant wasn't even completely finished yet. Lickie was surprised when she got there by not only ALL but one of the guests that were supposed to be @ the convention, but also Alan Tudyk, who had canceled from the convention due to prior commitments decided to show up & Morena Baccarin who wasn't even originally available for the con was there.

side note - As it turns out, ALL the actors & actresses involved in the convention claimed that nobody from booster events had ever gotten back to them to confirm their appearances. This is fueling rumors that Booster Events knew for @least a month that the fans were going to get screwed.

The extremely sad thing is, Booster Events is throwing a Veronica Mars convention in March & idiots, who know what just happened, are still shoveling money to Booster Events w/ hopes that it won't happen to them.


The coolest thing about it was, through the hard work of united fans & the generosity of the actors/esses & producer & other companies, the fans that got shafted by a professional convention company got a far better weekend than they would have had if Booster Events hadn't have shafted them. Fans hoping to get autographs, photo-ops & small conversations w/ the actors/esses got to drink & party w/ their heroes instead.

[toranoshi]

This seems to be an IRS investigation waiting to happen. Glad everything turned out ok in the end. And I'm glad my wife does not know about the Veronica Mars convention. She wants to stalk Kristin Bell.

[Delvie]

One rumor is all the money was spent on a horror-fest convention the month before that featured Campbell, but less than 50 people showed up. Regardless, even after everything, Booster Events are acting like they should be felt sorry for.

I co-organized & co-ran a different fan convention for it's entire 4 years. We were completely non-profit/not-for-profit. We did so many things wrong behind the scenes that I'm surprised we lasted more than 2 years. But we went from 98 people on year 1 to over 500 people by year 4 & every year, not one public complaint & only about 12 private ones. To screw up this bad is completely beyond my imagination w/out some sort of embezzlement. We threw our conventions @ nearly 1/3 the price Booster was charging, all while in a legal battle w/ a f@%^#g frog.

[toranoshi]

Yeah I am looking into starting a smaller comic show in the area, the problem is timing and location. My wife created and ran the  largest model horse show in the U.S. when she was younger so she has a good idea on organizing events and how to get show space for free or nearly free, which would allow me to offer great deals to dealers and small press people in the area and allow either free admission or only charge $1.00 to customers.

[Delvie]

It sounds like, together, we may have enough experience to put on a nonprofit/not-for-profit mini Shi fan convention in the future.


I forgot to mention that Nathan Fillion brought boxes of his own Serenity/Firefly memorabilia & gave it away to the fans that traveled the furthest. Nathan is cool people.

[BillyTucci]

Heard from Delvie about it on the phone.  That was one very cool outcome!  Delvie, she's gotta have some pics right?  Post em!

[toranoshi]

It sounds, like together, we may have enough experience to put on a nonprofit/not-for-profit mini Shi fan convention in the future.

Definitely. Logistics are our only problem now. I think tying it into an existing convention might help it out. You are not far from Baltimore right? I know I will be there in September  for the retailer conference again if I am not in training down in Kentucky(and even if I am I can still make it )

[Delvie]

If we did it in conjunction w/ a comic convention, it would most likely just be a big party. Too much red tape involved for anything else. On our 3rd yr, we helped a group of Witchblade fans throw a fan run convention using our volunteers & some of our rented ballrooms. It kind of turned into a nightmare.  We were a non-profit/not-for-profit organization. It's possible, but I highly doubt Wizard or other "Profit" hosts would allow us to ride their shirttails w/out a price.

You'll see on this forum in several spots where I joke about a Shi convention & what all I personally think it should have as  a min. I know I dream big. Even when we were throwing the convention I had to be reigned in because I had too many ideas for our budget (as well as co-founder, my other job was activities director). I know that in order to have a Shi Convention, we would have to have much more than the 10-20 fans here that I know would definately make it.

So, yeah- obviously, a Shi Bash @ 1st is a better idea. But I want a Shi convention. LOL

[Delvie]

A funny story as activities director -  

Our 1st year, one of my big ideas was an indoor laser tag room. The hotel was ok w/ it. We had obstacles built, lights were very dim so we could use strobe lights & fog machines (it was supposed to be aboard a space ship). We forgot to mention the fog machine to the hotel.  

Because of city ordinances (old town look) in this area of St Louis, the Hilton wasn't allowed to build up, but were allowed to build out, so there were several buildings. We had 1 complete building of ballrooms & conference rooms rented & one large room in the main building. The rest of the ballrooms in the main building were rented out to weddings for receptions & such.  

Does anybody have experience w/ what a fog machine does to smoke detectors?

While the bulk of our convention continued uninterupted in the other building, we cleared the hilton of all guests & shut down 4 wedding receptions & a family reunion & all that ended was a laser tag game.

LOL... AHHHH... THE MEMORIES!

[toranoshi]

That's a good one. There is some joke in there about clearing out the Hilton somewhere.(Paris)    

As far as Shi Bash VS Shi Con, I think the Baltimore Con might be the place to do it since a bunch of creators are in the city for the Batimore Con/Retailer Con. The show is small enough that we could have enough room to set up on the main floor if the guy that runs it is fine with that. I know that for the two days of the con (Sat/Sun) the upstairs rooms at the Batimore Convention Center are not in use(at least they were not this year) . I think the guy that runs it is Mark and I could try to contact him to see if he would be ok with the idea of us setting up an upstairs private area to hang out at with food, drinks, etc. Otherwise, I am up for any other ideas anyone else has for it.

[sllamky01]

Baltimore Con that would be the kiss of death for Delvie showing up.

And I'm agree with Billy Photos Please

[Delvie]

Can you believe she only took 4 the entire time? She was too busy helping people out. She said she felt like a rock star this weekend though & that there are tons of pics out there of her. We're just waiting for them to be posted on her myspace page by other people. Her space is on Billy's friends. Look for Morri.