Dashcon! Dash to the EXTREME

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I didn't even bat an eye at them raising that much money - we've seen first-hand how Chris made what at this point must be over 2000 dollars selling his crayon drawings. I think I'd rather have a ball pit with some friends for an hour to be honest.
 
I have a confession for you guys.

I almost went to this con.

Yup.

The admins (and I had no idea that one of them was a 17 year old at the time) announced and had a website for this thing a year in advance, and at that time it seemed like it could be a fun, mid-sized pop culture/fandom con.

I started saving money for it (and I don't live in Illinois so travel and hotel costs were the grand majority of that) but as the year went by and July slowly approached...

>cancellations of things I wanted to see
>most of Saturday having absolutely nothing happening (due to sharing the con with two weddings)
>getting zero confirmation on my entry in the cosplay contest when an e-mail with not only confirmation but crucial follow-up information was promised
>other little details that seemed fishy/too good to be true

What really sealed the deal: being presented with a convenient, affordable opportunity to attend Otakon instead.

So I held onto my precious monies and waited to see what I could experience of Dashcon vicariously through the Internet, all with the intent to judge whether or not it was good enough to plan for a possible 2015 attendance.

HO.

LY.

SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT.

Well, I don't have to tell you guys how that hot mess went down, and you can probably fathom how relieved I was (and still am) that I didn't waste a huge chunk of my money on it.

I followed along with the real-time reactions on that epic, multi-part /cgl/ thread and laughed and laughed and LAUGHED.

Imagine the laughter of someone who is somewhere between "deriving high doses of schadenfreude joy" and "horrified that they nearly fell into the trap" and there ya go.

If it hasn't been mentioned already, they announced the location and date of Dashcon 2015 right after their fucking disaster weekend ended.

Well, I know one place I won't be next year, and that's the Indianapolis Convention Center.
 
The contract for next years show would have been done months in advance, announcing it at the end of the current show is normal. It's possible they only contracted a small exhibit hall at the indy convention center. But I am guessing these idiots got a ton of space. Usually for the second year of a show you have clauses where if attendance or booth sold are below a certain amount you can cancel only paying a smaller sum. I doubt the show happen unless a big event management firm takes the con off their hands.

They are apparently trying to get a real company to run the 2015 and some are interested. My boss has actually contacted them possibly of taking on their debt (if it's low enough) in exchange for the show. If it goes anywhere I've been told ill be dealing with them since "Your young and sorta geeky". my guess is they will just fold or sell it to a bigger company that contacted them earlier.

Apparently they hired a "moe greenberg" as financial adviser for the event. It was some dude from 4 chan.

http://dashcon--2015.tumblr.com/post/91748961806/what-happened
 
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I am so delighted by this thread and you guys I can't even tell you. I am actually sorry I missed this, I would have never stopped laughing. I've been going to cons for nearly forty years and I have rarely heard of one crashing and burning this hard. I DO know of one that actually DID get thrown out of its hotel and local people ended up taking in the out-of-towners and they sat around in each other's yards and the thing went down in history as Lawn Con. I personally went to a convention in San Diego so under attended that the dealers ended up selling crap to each other and we actually had a great time, it also had one of the best masquerades I've ever been to for some reason. But this, damn, this is a perfect storm of letting teenagers Blue Sky a convention and what happens when they actually DO it! The 'ballpit' is now a part of the household lexicon here and I have now discovered Welcome To Night Vale! So thank you guys, thank you very much!
 
Thread necromancy!

Dashcon 2015 will not happen -the website was shut down. Which is just as well.

Best case scenario is that the organizers of Dashcon are fuck-ups (not just ignorant kids, but real fuck-ups) and shouldn't run conventions. Worst case scenario is that they are con-artists, really shouldn't run conventions, and should be sued.
 
Having read this entire thread I think I speak for most people when I ask, how can I get involved in ripping off dumb fandom tards too?
 
Chandler Cats said:
I am so delighted by this thread and you guys I can't even tell you. I am actually sorry I missed this, I would have never stopped laughing. I've been going to cons for nearly forty years and I have rarely heard of one crashing and burning this hard. I DO know of one that actually DID get thrown out of its hotel and local people ended up taking in the out-of-towners and they sat around in each other's yards and the thing went down in history as Lawn Con. I personally went to a convention in San Diego so under attended that the dealers ended up selling crap to each other and we actually had a great time, it also had one of the best masquerades I've ever been to for some reason. But this, damn, this is a perfect storm of letting teenagers Blue Sky a convention and what happens when they actually DO it! The 'ballpit' is now a part of the household lexicon here and I have now discovered Welcome To Night Vale! So thank you guys, thank you very much!
Click to expand...

At least some good came out of this. WTNV is amazing.
 
Surtur said:
At least some good came out of this. WTNV is amazing.
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WTNV is hilarious. I now know not to look at the Dog Park, which we observe wholeheartedly because there is one at our apartment building.
 
He Sets Me On Fire said:
Man, a con the year Star Wars came out. That must've been awesome.
Click to expand...

Now that's a con I'd love to see pictures from!

I'm actually a little surprised that the Wikipedia page for DashCon is still up as of this post. Some of the edit history is kind of funny. In any case, this kind of reminds me of TwiCon. It was run by people who somewhat knew what they were doing but decided that they were going to try to use it as a way to shake down fans for their money. Apparently everything was wildly expensive (even by con standards) and most of the perks were pretty crappy. I think that if Dashcon had been run by people with slightly more experience, they'd end up being TwiCon.
 
I have a hard time believing the ball pit was just "a joke". Their honest-to-god compensation for seats to a show that never happened was an extra hour in the ball pit. Assuming that's not false like the BDSM panel orgy rumor, I don't see how they could have been joking with the ball pit when their main idea of compensation was playing in the ball pit.
 
MysticMisty said:
I have a hard time believing the ball pit was just "a joke". Their honest-to-god compensation for seats to a show that never happened was an extra hour in the ball pit. Assuming that's not false like the BDSM panel orgy rumor, I don't see how they could have been joking with the ball pit when their main idea of compensation was playing in the ball pit.
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I have the impression that it started as a joke and then they figured that it's joke status would make it cooler because they meant reward in an ironic hipster shit sort of way. IF they hadn't demanded that everyone help raise $20,000 during the con and IF they hadn't pulled the dick move of making all of the guests pay for their own hotel rooms, they might have been able to get away with that. But then, if they hadn't had such shitty planning, odds are that the panel would still have gone on and they'd be planning for WTNV to come back the following year to the next con.
 
I actually briefly considered attending this con. My best friend lives in the Chicago area, and we were considering me flying out there and us attending together. This was when it was first announced, though--we both quickly forgot about it entirely and, obviously, wound up not going. Admittedly, a small part of me is disappointed that we didn't, just so I could have a firsthand account. :P

I feel bad for (most of) the attendees, honestly. I'm guessing most of the kids who came were really looking forward to it--and let's be real, given the average age of attendees, most of them probably had no idea that things might go badly when all those red flags started showing up before the con. And to be completely honest, a well-run and well-planned Tumblr-themed con could actually be genuinely fun and interesting, if only because conventions are generally really enjoyable affairs (in fact, I'm going to one this weekend--a well-established one that I've been attending for a couple of years now).
 
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