My Horrible Pemmi-Con Virtual Experience

 

The word is out that there will be a new convention in Milwaukee, and I'm leading the charge to make it happen. There will be a virtual option, and I've been forewarned by many that having a virtual con is difficult to do concurrently with an in-person con. Still, I've been running hybrid group meetings for three years running. I was one of the online moderators and chat room hosts for Discon III. I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to run an effective hybrid convention. But for all that, I know that my day is coming. When the Milwaukee Falcon finally launches late next year, I'll be putting my limited expertise to the ultimate test.

So, when I relate the horrific nightmare that was Pemmi-Con's Virtual Con experience two weekends ago, I know full well that I might be forced to eat my words when it's MY butt in the hot-seat. It's easy to criticize as a fan. But when you're a conrunner, everything looks different, because you know how impossible it can seem.

Nevertheless, I'm about to lower the boom on our Canadian friends.

I was very much looking forward to attending Pemmi-Con, Winnipeg, in person this year. My wife and I had our memberships and passports all ready to go. But circumstances arose that prevented us from going, so we had to forego the trip. In a way, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because it freed our schedule to attend a lovely family get-together in Lake Geneva which we wouldn't have been able to attend otherwise. Still, I was kind of bummed.

Fortunately, Pemmi-Con offered an eleventh-hour hybrid option. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that I wouldn't miss out.

I had no idea what I was in for.

Trouble initially started when I let Pemmi-Con know that I would be downgrading my membership and needed to refund my wife's membership. I don't know if this is de rigueur, but I was told that the only way to get a refund on my wife's membership was to sell it to someone else. I know refunds are a pain in the ass for any convention's accounting department. I've been there. I know some conventions are clear about a "no refunds" policy. But this was a bit of a slap in the face. Especially since I went over the emails and membership details on Pemmi-Con's website, and I didn't find any "all sales final" clauses! I offered my wife's membership for sale through a couple of outlets, trying deliberately to market to people in the Winnipeg area and elsewhere. I didn't get any takers.

Then the online con nightmare began. It's not unusual for the virtual con to go a little off the rails at first. Conventions seldom do a dress-rehearsal, so it takes a while for people to get the hang of what they're doing. But in Pemmi-Con's case, it not only went off the rails, there wasn't even a train.

As people tried to join their chosen Thursday panels, and found nothing, it slowly became apparent that something was dreadfully wrong. Eventually, we learned that there would be no Zoom option that day, but that it would be available the following day. We didn't learn this by email. We didn't learn it by text. We didn't learn it by Discord, Slack, or any other messaging app that conrunners typically use to keep their attendees informed. We didn't even learn by an announcement on the website's blog.

We learned it by Facebook. Facebook!

At this point, I was starting to get pissed. I'd overpaid and was now expected to get 25% less product. Not cool.

But I wasn't nearly as angry as one other individual whom I will not name. He was absolutely furious on social media about this development. He ranted, raved, cursed, and eventually posted an image of a con ribbon to his feed which read "Pemmi-Can't." It was a deliberately low blow, but I could sympathize. Hell, part of me wanted to join the chorus with him. It's why I chose that as the image for this blog post.

The disappointment carried over into Friday. After much of the day was spent helplessly watching the clock as our chosen panels came and went, we were informed - again by Facebook - that the Zoom options were finally available. It was 2:10 Friday afternoon. We were told to check our emails for the Zoom links.

My email inbox remained empty.

Whether I was still listed as an in-person attendee or not shouldn't have mattered. In-person attendees have virtual rights too, and sometimes one needs to stay in one's hotel room for whatever reason. Maybe the spouse has a headache. Maybe the kid needs a nap. Maybe the attendee is hung over. Maybe someone tested positive for Covid and needs to sit the rest of the con out in the hotel. Whatever the reason, there is zero reason why I shouldn't have received the Zoom links. Everyone should have gotten them. It leads me to believe there were many other in-person attendees who received no emails either.

There were some Friday panels I was really interested in, but I couldn't get to them. I checked my spam folder, I looked in the promo areas that G-mail sometimes shuffles mail into, but found nothing.

Even signing in to the website was an issue. There were two ways to do so. (And I stumbled upon the wrong one.) In one area of the website, one entered one's email and got taken to the schedule. For all intents and purposes, that make one seem "signed in." Until, that is, one tried to purchase a ticket for site selection. Then, you couldn't see the option to do so. (Note, the "correct" way to sign in was to use an actual username and password. I had to dig through my old emails to find them.)

Some background might be needed here. When one votes for a new convention site, one pays a supporting membership for that site in order to do so. This gives the voter a supporting membership for that future event. In this case, the only candidate to host a NASFiC (North American Science Fiction Convention) for 2024 was Buffalo, NY. So, the money paid in would technically be Buffalo's, not Winnipeg's. Transferring the money from Winnipeg to Buffalo would therefore be tricky, but not impossible. But Winnipeg insisted that voters buy a voting token, regardless of whether they were due a refund or not.

Unfortunately, I was not correctly "signed in," even though it looked like I was. That meant I couldn't see where to buy a token. So, in some desperation, I wrote to the site selection committee and asked them to apply my overpayment towards a voting token membership for Buffalo. I wasn't trying to be a jerk about it, but it looked like I had no other choice.

Fortunately, Kevin Standlee swooped in and saved the situation with his skill and experience. It was the first thing during the virtual con to go right. We got the situation straightened out (after we exchanged screen-grabs to show each other what we were seeing) and my site selection vote went through. But what a headache!

Also, it shouldn't have taken someone as prominent as Kevin Standlee to fix this. It felt to me rather like a professor came in to get his overwhelmed college students out of a jam.

On Saturday morning, there was only a little improvement. I got my Zoom links, but only because I groused for them. I wrote a desperate email to the programming team saying that I was STILL waiting for my Zoom links, and would very much like to receive them in time for the business meeting at 10:00.

This time I got a return email right away. I got the Zoom links, and was able to log in just as my wife and I left for Lake Geneva. It was a nice business meeting, and I could follow most of it, but because we were in a moving vehicle, the feed kept cutting out. I don't fault Pemmi-Con for that, but it was a bit annoying.

The other panels I wanted to enjoy that day were disappointments. One was a 4:00 panel that ostensibly was supposed to be about rebuilding the fan base of local clubs. Instead, the panel went off on tangents about various authors and sci fi history. Again, I can't fault Winnipeg for that one, but it did feel like a bait-and-switch.

Next, I wanted to join a 5:30 panel discussion about the Royal Manticoran Navy, as written about by David Weber. I followed the Zoom link - and got nothing. There was apparently a login password, which I didn't have, but I suspected there was an error somewhere.

By this point, I was almost home from Lake Geneva. I used my laptop to log in to the panel as soon as I got home, which was at about 6:10. As I suspected, I didn't need a password when signing on via laptop. That was apparently a glitch only iPhones had. But once inside the Zoom meeting, I only found two other users, both with their microphones turned off. If there had been a panel at all, it was long over.

Day three, and I had jack squat.

And Sunday? Well, there were some panels I was very much interested in. But again, I had no Zoom links. The ones from the previous day didn't work. So, again, I sent off a desperate email. Again, to Winnipeg's partial credit, I received a prompt reply containing the Zoom links. But the panels I wanted did not have a Zoom option. Crap!

I did get to see the closing ceremonies. It was the one thing that worked flawlessly, in as much as the link actually worked. But by then, I was seething, and only attended that event so that I could take notes about what closing ceremonies might look like. But the sound was awful, especially for the music. One could hear the singers, but not their instruments. One could see the bagpipes, but not hear them. Even the camera angle was crooked!

Time to lay it on the line. I got screwed over. So did a lot of virtual fans for Pemmi-Con. At the barest minimum, the virtual panels need to be uploaded to YouTube right away. That, and a public apology is definitely in order. It's a small penance for leaving so many out, it costs nothing except a little time, and as they say, "better late than never."

And there should be refunds coming. I'm well aware that most cons run on a shoestring budget. I'm also aware of the usual practice of waiting until all bills are paid before any refunds are given out. (By way of comparison, I was owed a refund from Chicon 8, and didn't receive it until 2 weeks ago!) But when one pays Cadillac prices and receives a Jalopy, one wants the difference paid back!

This blog post was uploaded after I'd written to Pemmi-Con and voiced my grievances. More than a full week later, I've yet to get a reply.

The point of this blog post isn't to exact some sort of P.R. revenge. It's to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening again. I'm trusting Pemmi-Con to make this right, not for me, but for the many other fans who are in this same predicament. No future con should ever bomb like this.

I have the impression that Winnipeg only decided to bid on a NASFiC after it lost out to Chengdu, China, to host Worldcon. The Winnipeg team put out a statement saying that it was considering a NASFiC bid, but that announcement struck me as maudlin. (Anybody else get that feeling?) After that, there was a long stretch where they said nothing. It left me thinking that the loss of the Worldcon bid left them with very little wind in their sails, and they never regained momentum. Maybe that impression is true, maybe not, but it sure seems like the former. 

Pemmi-Con added the virtual option late. I'm not sure why. Perhaps they were cajoled into it. Or, perhaps they didn't realize they could do it until only a couple of months before launch. Who knows? It seems clear to me that they didn't have enough time or manpower to do an effective job on short notice, and they would have been better off simply re-allocating their volunteers elsewhere at the con. And I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that when it comes to having a virtual con option, it's better to not offer it at all than offer up something half-assed. Or in this case, one-quarter-assed.

I reiterate, my time is coming. It's just possible that when I'm trying to run a virtual con at the same time as an in-person one, I will regret this blog post. Somehow, I think I won't.

But one thing's for sure: While I'm working my ass off to make sure that both virtual and in-person attendees are having a great experience, I'll be keeping this horrific Pemmi-Con experience at the front of my mind, and doing my damnedest not to repeat it!

Eric

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