Room Party Culture - What Worldcon Did Right
Parties in SF Fandom can be a particularly interesting art. They started so long ago that working out the history would be a pretty deep article in itself. Itâs storied enough that there are blogs named after SF convention party rooms and named groups like Barfleet, Biohazard, the Cult of Scott Bakula, and the Space Cadets whose sole purpose is to prepare for and throw these gatherings. But hereâs a little bit of background:
At Science Fiction Conventions, room parties are not âafter partiesâ. Though they are not program items per se, they are largely viewed as an intrinsic part of the convention to the point that most of the conventions make great strides to ensure that members know where they need to go and even are directly facilitated to do so in various ways. This is in contrast to many for-profit events and some other kinds of convention where you sort of have to âknow a guyâ or have a particular set of credentials to get into a room party. Here, youâre part of a weird family of sorts, so youâre generally welcome and even encouraged to come in.
But this article is more an appraisal of Worldcon parties, particularly those at the most recent one, Sasquan in Spokane, WA.
(pictured:Â The frequently seen -- especially on the East Coast -- DIY-driven Party Board, a simple crowdsourced way to share your parties at a con; usually located near Registration)
As seen in many East Coast conventions like Lunacon, Arisia, and Philcon, this Worldcon had a âParty Boardâ, simply a listing of room gatherings that members of the convention wanted to share with other members. These mostly took the form of âbid partiesâ, attempts to convince folks to vote for an upcoming Worldcon in a specific region, and soirees for people in the literature business (book release parties and the like), but a few exceptions included a Babylon 5 party and birthday party (where the birthday boy handed out some nice ciders).
(pictured: An old-school Klingon bar at a typical Science Fiction Convention. They ran out of Romulan Ale quickly)
Shhh, donât advertise alcohol at parties publicly! This is a common and pretty understandable mantra -- conventions can get in serious trouble if this happens. Stilll, the restriction can be more and less overt depending on the convention. At Arisia in the Northeast, for instance, the only parties allowed on the party board or on public flyers are non-alcoholic gatherings. There are a lot of parties, but while they are generally open to all con members 21 and up, the invite measures can be tricky.
Sasquan/Worldcon had none of that. I donât think there was a single party on the public party board or otherwise that didnât have some form of alcohol being freely given out. And I salute that form of sticking it to the man.
(pictured: Con Suite Meat; sort of cheating, as we didnât take many pictures of the parties proper, but weâre sneaking this in as the Con Suite is listed on that party board, and it is a public gathering that any con member can attend)
MEAT (and other kinds of real food)
The one category where Worldcon continuously excels is the likelihood for parties to have actual food, not just cheap crackers, cheese cubes, and those LEGO candies that look awesome but donât quite fit together right.
Montreal had Poutine, Japan had... items that your typical American would find very interesting but very weird (squid-flavoured potato chips and burger-flavoured crunchy-poofs, for instance), DC had strips of bread with a variety of olive oils to test out, New Orleans had rice and beans in a slow cooker. Nearly every bid-related party had some sort of thing that a person might legitimately call a meal or a part thereof and not, say, more a part of a football-viewing session. There were tiny meat pies, little custard things, unexpected chocolates with custom logos stamped on, many delightful things that kept people coming back.  And they were all free, everything put forth by the beneficence of the party hosts.
As we didnât get to the Babylon 5 party, we canât report on whether or not spoo was served.
Worldcons (as do other cons) generally set aside specific space to have the party in order to make it easy for people to party hop and to reduce the chance of noise complaints. This year, for âSasquanâ, the party space was a party hotel, as was the case in Renoâs 2011 âRenovationâ Worldcon. Folks who wanted to party were facilitated by free shuttle buses that came along every twenty minutes, though it was only a fifteen minute walk away.
While shuttle buses are often provided when the party hotel and other official hotels are distant, this yearâs were the most consistent and the most frequent. Not a visit happened where the bus was more than a couple minutes away from our approach at the stop, and thatâs pretty great, especially at the end of the night when youâve reached your personal limit from partying!
Even with the Party Board, itâs hard at some cons to get people in the rooms. More than any other convention Iâve seen, Worldcon has crafted a culture where a gigantic fraction of the conventionâs members aggressively attend parties. This year in particular, the parties were insanely packed from the start at most nights. Although this comes with some tradeoffs, I consider it a definitely net positive, as it means people are out there to have fun and they know how to do it in the context of this part of the event.
While a followup post here will be critical of some aspects of parties at Worldcon, itâs important that we stress that a lot of great work is put in here by a lot of great people. Worldcon is among the top tier of events that really go out of their way to make sure that every member can be aware of as many gatherings as possible. In a way, it resembles the very open nature of many of the regional burning man style events, more so that any other style of convention weâve visited. And in the end, we think that this kind of openness is what makes the âfannish SFâ community rather special.
