UK PonyCon put out this press release yesterday. It says that, owing to a clash with university needs (the venue is owned by a uni), the convention has been moved to 9th/10th October. We must all hope that circumstances by then are good enough that these dates can actually happen! If UKPC can go ahead, it will be almost exactly two years since the last one, which was in October 2019.
That's the informative part of this post. But to the question "Will you be attending, Logan?" I still can't give a definite answer. In all honesty, I think the odds remain against it, perhaps fairly heavily. I'm not especially worried about my personal safety, since I'm now double-dosed with vaccine and so about as safe as I'm going to be. As such, I doubt that would be a particularly large consideration of mine.
No, for me a larger problem is uncertainty. For example, UKPC say they will "publish details of the measures [they're] taking nearer the time of the event." The snag there is that I'd want to know what those measures were before I committed one way or the other. As a simple example, if singing were significantly restricted that would be quite a big minus point for me. Not for everyone, but for me singing is a big part of conventions.
If the measures are not announced until after tickets have been on sale for a while, there's a chance they may have sold out before I feel I have enough information to commit. If that happens, so be it. That may be more likely if capacity has to be reduced and so fewer tickets are on sale – though who knows what demand will actually be? Old assumptions may no longer hold.
Another factor: over the past year we've seen massive advances in online MLP events. There is now far more knowledge and experience about what works and how to make it work than there was in the old days when Horses At Home was the only online con. Attending events online can mean huge financial savings, balanced against the loss of the personal touch and the physical experience.
Indeed, it will be interesting to see whether UK PonyCon itself runs any online stuff during the in-person con. Clearly there won't be a parallel online convention: the level of work required would be impossible. But perhaps there could be a bit of streaming, and something like a Pony Town server might allow people who couldn't attend the con to experience a bit of the community interaction.
Although I do expect significant demand for returning in-person cons like UKPC, I wouldn't be at all surprised if online events continued on at least some scale. After all, not everyone is lucky enough to live in a country which ever has in-person events. Others may not feel ready to return to large crowded events this year even if they're okay with small meets. And so on and so forth.
I'm not ruling out going to UKPC in October. As everyone who's read this blog for a while will know, I have a great deal of time for that convention, and certainly attending would have its attractions. However, as things stand, I think it's quite unlikely that I'll be attending another con before 2022. I suspect I'm going to need to wait for the day when I can plan with some certainty several months out – and we're not quite at that point yet.
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