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UnCon 2017

So, let's see - still no news about an official UnCon, right? I will poke the folks at FT, see what they have to say..

Poke away and please update us here if you glean any information.

Nothing has trickled down to my lowly level.
 
It was me looking into doing UnCon in Newcastle. Situation as it stands is that UnCon used to be funded out of the publisher's PR budget for the mag, but a reorganisation at Dennis about 5 years back now made all the magazine staff freelancers working for independent units with Dennis just doing printing and distribution. This meant they no longer had PR budgets so the funding dried up and FT itself (a seperate entity that licences the name to Dennis) doesn't have that kind of money available either. At the start of last year I left the science centre where I worked as one of the directors and set up as a consultant, which gave me a bit more leeway as to what I do with my llife. From my job I have a lot of experience of setting up and running large events so thought I'd have a go at resurrecting UnCon on behalf of FT and worked out a costing that showed we could break even, including paying for my organising time if we did it here in Newcastle where facilities cost a fraction of what they do in London, but is also where the transport links from most of the country are surprisingly fast and hotels etc are again far cheaper than London. I needed Dennis to co-operate as ideally I would like a free ad or two as it would be promoting their product, and they do need to know what is going on. Having sent them the business plan etc I only got the vaguest response, but was told I'd need to pay them a licence fee to use the name 'Fortean Times UnConvention'. Now, as they in fact licence the FT brand from Bob and Paul this should not be the case and if anyone was paid a licence fee it should be Bob and Paul (who also came up with 'UnConvention'), who are fully behind the UnCon idea, I have been trying to get some further sense out of Dennis so we can resolve this and I can do something, but am not getting much traction. I may see about just doing it and worry about Dennis later
 
It was me looking into doing UnCon in Newcastle
Yes please. Would go to that, regardless. A 400 mile round-trip is much-easier than a 900 mile version (I'm going to go with less than half as bad, and more that twice as good)

Plus, Newcastle would be totally-lush as a venue in a supa-canny way, fella.

I may see about just doing it and worry about Dennis later
That might be said to help ensure the general intention of met entitlement (and reasonable expectations of an Identifiable Interest Group) were being more-fittingly met, in a manner convergent with aspirational legislation such as the ECHR. As an identifying Fortean, I'd like to think that my beliefs (and disbeliefs) are being appropriately-respected within society :)
 
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