Even more Hugo stuff

Another excellent round up from Cora Buhlert on the current state of play.  I don't agree with everything she says, but she nails a lot of it.

I've some more thoughts I need to get out on the nature of organisational change which I'll think on some more before posting.  I'm in a tricky position. I don't really think the Hugos are all that broken, at least no more broken than they have been in a few decades (say 4 or so) and while some of the wins annoy me, that is the nature of awards.  Especially awards with essentially open voting by members of the public.

At the heart of this is a, valid I think, complaint that the same people get nominated a lot and you feel you're on the outside then it is frustrating.  A lot of these complaints seem to come from elements of British fandom who seem to feel that Americans run everything... the problem is, there's a fairly mundane reason why it looks like this and it's less to do with conspiracy and more to do with the difference in population size.

Ideas....

In the movie The Social Network, there's a point where one of the Winklevoss twins complains that Mark Zuckerburg stole their idea, and he counters that if they had had the idea they'd have built Facebook.  It's a tricky charge, because actually both of them are somewhat correct.

And this is something that has occurred to me reading a bunch of Fan related stuff over the weekend.  I'm on a mailing list, no, not that one, but one about Start Ups in Seattle.  It has a lot in common with that other list that there are long winded discussions and esoteric debate about things that are relatively meaningless.  However, there's something that keeps cropping up, and it's hardly unique to Seattle Start Ups.

Somebody out there has had a GREAT IDEA.  No seriously, it's fucking amazing, you won't believe how clever it is until you hear it, and all they need is a developer to work for free for a small percent of stock to build an Minimum Viable Product because once it's built you're going to be a billionaire.  And at the heart of the problem is this.

Ideas don't actually matter all that much.

Having an idea for a great novel is meaningless unless you can write it.  Having an idea for the next Facebook or even the original one if you can't execute on it and take it forward is also meaningless.  And execution is hard work.  You have to spend a lot of time actually fleshing out your idea.  You have to take it from 'wouldn't X be cool' to something concrete that works.  A lot of the time, as I've learned over the last 3 years that also means finding that X is pretty damn far from being a good idea.  And having the guts to kill a dog of an idea and do something else.

We've done it twice since we started and it's been hard each time.

I also couldn't have done it without persuading other people to get involved and help and come on the trip. It's been scary, hard, trying and fun all at the same time.

Which makes me look at some of the current bloodletting in Fandom with a slightly different look.  Having a Blog, or an idea, or a concept for improving things doesn't really matter if you can't execute on it and execute on it within the framework available.  Just writing a good blog and tweeting about it isn't going to turn you into Whatever.  Writing it for years and building a following that people come back to again and again is what does that.  It's also knowing that for everybody who agrees with your position there are plenty out there that don't.  For everybody thinking Requireshate deserves a Hugo for what they do, there's a bunch who think Vox Day should get one for their bilious shite.

You feel slighted that you're not being recognised because people don't read your Blog or see how clever you are?  Sorry.  But there are limited hours in the day for me to indulge my fannish interests, and I waste enough of them on stuff that doesn't pay the bills.  I read a bunch of blogs with SF themes, I drop in and out of Fanzines too.  I follow some LJ and Facebook.  I don't read your Blog?  Sorry...  But why should I?

And that's it in a nutshell, the gulf between doing something and doing something in such a way that lots of people sit up and take notice.  You don't get to have the second without doing a lot of hard work and working to engage them.  You are not owed a living (sorry) and it's not their fault for not having heard of you.

The reason why people read Chris Garcia so much is because he makes sure you hear from him.  The reason I've only just heard of some of these bloggers is they do not and don't seem to want me as a reader.

EDIT: I, quite unfairly I've decided, name checked Adam Whitehead.  His blog doesn't intersect many of my interests, and I though he was being snarky on one forum, but actually he was engaged and interesting on others, so I've made an edit.  Sorry Adam, if you read this.

Today's Oh Just Grow Up Moment...

Said to me on another discussion:

And really, I’m “reveling in not even wanting to engage with all of fandom”? No what I said was the opposite. The problem is that the only ones not really represented in wider online fandom is convention fandom. And that goes back to what I said about everything has to happen on your premise. We’re not excluding anyone, you have chosen to keep yourself seperate, and to only accept people who follow you to those places seperate from the wider fandom.

"Wider Fandom"  What in the hell is "Wider Fandom"?

I want somebody to draw a Venn Diagram of Wider Fandom and show me where it is and where Convention Fandom is.  I wouldn't mind if I was all that avid a convention goer.  When I read things like this I get the feeling I used to get reading the Trufen list where there was a distinct undercurrent that if you hadn't hand mimeographed a hand-typed fanzine then you weren't actually an SF Fan.  How in the hell can anybody, especially somebody who uses the Internet and social networks have such a delusion that what they see as Online Fandom is anything other than a tiny slice of it?

Missed the 10 years thing...

A decade on LJ...  weird.  I wonder what I'll do over the next decade.