Hat-tip to Idris for alerting me to this.
It's no secret that I rarely read Horse News, but from time to time it does come up with something really worthwhile. The article in question is titled Rolling Pone: An Interview on Pony Convention Finances and Doubtful Allegations, which makes it sound like it's just a scandal piece – but actually, it's a lot more interesting than that. As always with HN, don't go reading it anywhere that's going to make a big deal about NSFW language.
I'm not going to try to summarise the whole thing, since that would detract from the flavour, but writer Foal Duke's pseudonymous associate (who has extensive experience in event organisation) makes it pretty clear that brony cons have very weird finances when set against many other fandoms (yes, even furry) and that a super-high-cost environment like Britain shouldn't really have been able to support a con like BUCK at all. In other words, the BUCK team did the impossible.
One little nugget from the comments, although in true 4chan style it's from an anon: apparently a single hall at Birmingham's NEC costs £100,000 for just one day's hire. Even if an event managed to negotiate a discounted rate, you can see why there is absolutely no chance of something like BUCK ever happening at a place like that. Actually, the comments thread contains more interesting posts than memes and insults, including a fun one by knighty about his own experiences. (I was at that fanfic contest; he did indeed have to rush out to buy pens.)
Anyway, read the article for yourself. It's not that long, and it provides a perspective that I haven't seen before, at least not when applied specifically to the UK.
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