In hindsight, moving to New York City was an awesome idea. It smells bad, and everybody sucks, but it has a major advantage of being the center of the murrfrukin world, or close enough anyway. Thus, I don’t have to travel far to go to the NYComic Con or the recently attended PAX East in Boston. Now with NECSS pretty much here, I feel like I have it pretty good.
But many folks are not so well placed geographically, or the financial burden of travelling across the country is too great. Granted, things are getting better. My friend who travels all the way from Australia to attend TAM every year can now just go to TAM Australia. Honestly, she probably goes to both now. But this made me wonder, as the amount of cons grows, do we all just stay home as a result?
My gut reaction–and I look at comic conventions when I say this— is no. People love to travel and the more the merrier. Right?
Where do you stand? Are you the many who feel left out of the fun because flying across the country is just too much?
Or do you think keeping the amount of big conferences low keeps them chock full of speakers who aren’t frantically trying to spread themselves around?
Are you the middle group who sees this as a false dichotomy? Because it is. Really, my bad. But bear with me.
The ART Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Mad Art Lab community. Look for it to appear Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 3pm ET.
I just flew from L.A. to New York to see YOU. Oh and go to NECSS. So uh, yeah. That answers that. 😉
I am stuck in the frozen north feeling cold, poor and unloved. That being said, I don’t ask conferences to come to me because that’s just silly. I’d rather have an awesome conference that I can’t attend than a crappy one that I can.
The more the merrier (my iPad tried to autocorrect that to nerdier – what is it trying to say about me?). Spread the love!
Its a lot cheaper and easier when there is one close to home, and way fun to travel to those farther away. I went to TAM7 and hope to go to more, and I reeeeeeeeally want to go to DragonCon someday, and ComicCon, and… And… And…
I, like Maki, am happy to live in the swirling vortex of NYC. I would love to go to TAM one day, but it’s always about the lack of $$$. But that’s okay. I get out. I walk a lot. I’ve been to MoCCA, and Comicon and all the NECSSesssss’s. Also, I like that right now, both Maki and Amy are within a few miles of where I sit. And soon, we’ll be sitting next to each other drinking beer.
Due to responsibilities at home I can’t travel often, but I thoroughly enjoyed Skepticon 3, but am also thankful that we have both SkeptiCal returning this year and the Rapture party, all within a week of each other. Traveling to the con’s is fun, but being able to stay home and maybe encourage friends who are of a similar mindset, but unwilling to travel for that specific reason, to attend a con or two, I think both are equally important.