Convention Poll

[GoktimusPrime]

this may sound like a silly question, but why exactly are you holding one? what is the purpose of it? is it a large fan meet for all the fans over australia, or is it something to drum up extra support for the fandom and hence the board, or am i way off?

It's essentially a national swap meet. At the OzFormers booth at SupaNova 2003 we conducted a survey and the single most popular thing that people wanted at a convention was to be able to buy toys.

Yes, we have regular fan swap meets in several major cities now, and that's great, but the idea of a convention (even if just a stall/booth) would be a national swap meet - an opportunity for fans from around the country to assemble and trade, sell, buy toys.

But I dunno... maybe the fact that swap meets are occurring quite frequently now in so many places may have made the need for an Australian convention redudant. It's only been quite recently that we've had swap meets thriving as they do now - in 2003 this wasn't the case. If you or anyone else thinks that the idea of convention would be redundant then please vote on "Neither/other" and post on this thread stating so.

But a convention would also help drum up support and awareness for Australian Transfandom and I think that would be a big plus. And I like the idea of a regular national swap meet instead of just most people sticking to their own pockets around the country. It's a great chance to meet fans from coast to coast... at past conventions we had fans from Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Toowoomba, Perth etc. - people came from far and wide to attend Sabretron and OzToyCon. Except for griffin I think most folks only attend interstate meets if they just happen to be travelling there, whereas many fans specifically came to Sydney for the express purpose of attending TF conventions.

Meets tend to be "board exclusive" events in a way too... i.e.: most people who attend meets organised by OzFormers members are mostly OzFormers members, whereas at conventions we had people from other boards like TAAU and also people who just don't frequent TF boards. They're meets for all kinds of Transfans. The_Scream_Man only recently joined OzFormers yet he was present at Sabretron in 2004 (meaning that he was a non-member at the time).

Coast to coast: Perth's 1orion2many with Sydney's dirge at OzToyCon


Non-OzFormers also in attendance: The_Scream_Man and TAAU's black zarak

perhaps it would be cheaper to meet at Ayers rockUluru, its in the middle, convenient for all

Yeah... you go ahead and organise that.