Okay, I didn't actually attend this event (thank god), but however I heard a ton about it recently. I figured most of you should be informed about it too.
Well to start, last weekend was the Dashcon. This was the first ever Tumblr convention, and by that, I mean an actual convention held outside the internet, at an actual hotel. It was run by Tumblr's community and some of the representatives of it's multiple fanbases. The Tumblr community thought that this would be one of the best moments in the history of Tumblr, but turns out, it was anything but that.
The convention went from bad to worse, with the whole thing all going to hell rather quickly, and it soon became an absolute disaster of a convention. Some of the terrible things that happened at Dashcon are as follows.
- The head organizers asked for $17,000 in donations upon arriving at the convention site, because they never made concrete plans with the hotel it was to be held at, and said that they had to pay if they didn't want to be kicked out.
- There was a dealer's hall that was completely empty save for a few tables, a bouncy castle, and the infamous ball pit, which was basically an inflatable kiddie pool with plastic balls in it.
- The Scheduled performers walked out because the con organizers where unable to pay their appearance fees, thus forcing them to pay out of pocket for their own travel expenses and interrupt their tours.
- They did not refund the con goers who paid for tickets to see the performers, but instead just allowed them entry into a raffle and an extra hour in the ballpit as compensation (total cheapskates).
- Underage children were allowed into panels at the convention that were about totally not family-friendly stuff, such as sex and erotic content.
- Someone pissed in the ball pit during the "Extra Hour" and, what do you know, posted on his own Tumblr about it afterwards.
- Last but not least, the hotel reported that they had never asked the con organizers for any money, so the part where they had to raise $17000 is suspected to be a big get-rich-quick scheme.
Dashcon has been considered to be the most poorly run convention ever. This was mainly due to the utterly incompetent, and inexperienced, moderators of the convention, and multiple debacles throughout the weekend.
Read more about what happened at Dashcon here. --> http://fusion.net/modern_life/story/dashcon-tumblr-convention-ridiculed-poor-planning-862732
I'm sure that by now, there are plenty of other news articles all over the internet about it as well.
What's your thoughts and opinions on this? I think this will go down in Tumblr history as one of their darkest days ever, and they'll have to go through a whole lot to recover from this!
