Over on UK of Equestria, Nethesem (BUCK's Deputy PR Manager) has been posting some interesting information. Not least this Q&A thread. As you can see if you take a look at it, almost everything is still up in the air – really the only thing we're sure about is that a 2014 convention is indeed being planned. Birmingham has been mentioned as a potential venue, while the con may well be brought forward a month, to late July. This should help to avoid too many clashes with other events.
One of the things that does seem likely to happen, though, is the a "grass-roots, community-oriented approach". This isn't surprising, given that so many of the participatory events (pub quiz, flashfic contest, gaming tournament, karaoke etc) were very overcrowded last year. It should also help to give BUCK 2014 a distinct, fresh flavour, rather than having it just being a slightly different re-run of this year's con in a different place. So far so good on that score, though!
Everyone, including me, wants to know what tickets are going to cost, but that won't be announced for a while. Nethesem's post states that a Kickstarter campaign may be utilised: everyone pays the same for the actual ticket, but perks are added at certain Kickstarter donation levels. I believe that GalaCon in Germany makes heavy use of crowdfunding, and although BUCK's model isn't likely to be the same, that does prove it can work for a brony convention. All in all: looking good so far!
That's certainly all very encouraging. If they do opt for Birmingham as the venue, I could see that working very well, though of course Nostalgia and Forbidden Planet won't know what hit them. ;) I like the Kickstarter idea a lot too. I know Kickstarter isn't a miracle answer for funding, but I've seen 3 Kickstarter projects so far, which all turned out a lot better than hoped. (There was one for that new Elite game which went unbelievabley skyhigh with the money it raised, and James D Stark raised a lot more than he expected.) So I'm sure they'd do well if they gave that a try. :)
ReplyDeleteWith any luck the Kickstarter will raise £100 billion and they can buy the whole of Birmingham to turn it into a pony theme park. ;)
DeleteThis pleases me greatly! ;)
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