What if they threw a convention and no one came. That eternal question was answered this weekend in Dallas at FedCon USA (hereafter to be known ad DedCon USA). And yes I know that several hundred diehard fans actually made the trek (and I thank each and every one of them) however this was a convention that was supposed to draw thousands of fans to the DFW Hyatt this weekend.

The combination of an inexperienced and under capitalized promoter spelled doom for this convention.

We were one of the vendors in the Dealer’s Room. I (as with almost all of the other vendors) obtained our space at the convention based upon the reputation of FedCon Germany. We were informed that not only had FedConUSA licensed the name but that there was substancial financial participation and other committment from FedCon Germany. None of us were informed when this financial participation was withdrawn months ago. I personally hold FedCon Germany partially to blame for this debacle.

It’s a shame because this could have been a wonderful show. However without proper financial backing and a totally inexperienced promoter this was bound to happen. And I feel very badly for the fans who’d made the effort to show up who had the rug pulled out from under them.

We have been professional SF/Fantasy vendors for 30 years and this is now the 2nd time that we’ve had a convention canceled in the middle of the event. Unfortunately the other occurrence was also in Texas (the morbidly curious can look up Ultimate Fantasy in Houston).

Because we can do it (and partially to mitigate our losses for the weekend) we will be producing a limited edition commemorative t-shirt that says “I got FRAKKED at F(crossed out)DedCon USA! anyone interested in obtaining one of these needs to order by Thur 6/19/08 as I’ll be printing and mailing them next weekend and removing it from the website at that time. It's the very first item on the Featured Products on this website.

There are a lot of good SF/Fantasy/Anime conventions around the country and particularly in Texas. I would like to hope that the first time attendees who were burned by this unscrupulous promoter to please please give conventions another try. They really are a lot of fun. Here is a small list of DFW area shows. DallasComicCon/SciFiExpo (www.scifiexpo.com); FenCon (www.fencon.org); ConDFW (www.condfw.org); All-Con (www.all-con.org); Project A-Kon (www.a-kon.com); Texas Frightmare Weekend (www.texasfrightmareweekend.com); AnimeFest (www.animefest.org); Portus (www.hp2008.org); Texas FearFest (www.txfearfest.com). And for those of you who travelled up from South Texas I recommend Apollo-Con Jun 27-29 (www.apollocon.org) in Houston.

Scott Merritt

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