DashCon 2014 - What Happened?

kanrose:

As someone with a vested interest in the Las Pegasus Unicon fiasco (and someone who has been working and planning conventions for 4 years now), I decided to do some research on DashCon for the exact same reasons - it appears to have been a complete and total disaster.

If anyone has ACTUAL PROOF that either confirms or debunks any of the following claims, please let me know.

Here’s what I’ve learned about DashCon so far:

• con staff trying to push more expensive tickets onto people that apparently came with a Steam Powered Giraffe show ticket (which is apparently not happening)

• vendor hall mostly empty for some undisclosed reason

• Welcome To Night Vale ditched the con and cancelled their panel and performance when DashCon would not pay them. attendees sat in the room for an hour before they got an explanation

• people paid RESERVE SEATS months in advance for the WTNV panel

• Con staff insisting they had people in the thousands attending and present at the venue, when real numbers were closer to 500

• Panels and events were not planned at all, with hotel mints being given out as prizes

• Games room had just a single TV in it and some tables

• there was a BDSM panel and DashCon could get sued for allowing minors into it, along with other +18 panels where they did the same

• some people started to sing Let It Go and were verbally assulted

• DashCon now blaming the bank for not being able to pay WTNV

• people are demanding partial or full refunds (and they will not likely see any of it due to the con not actually having any money)

• it has already spread around that DashCon was likely a scam

• last night they ran an emergency #SaveDashCon thing and raised like 17,000 bucks

• nobody knows where it went

• most of their contracts were verbal only

• rumors of the venue now threatening to shut the whole thing down

As someone who witnessed first-hand as Las Pegasus Unicon went down (I tracked the whole thing over the course of about 4 months until the dust began to settle), I’m genuinely interested to see how this plays out. You’ve got a whole con full of bored and annoyed Tumblr-goers who will either a) just plain not show up tomorrow, or b) show up and be very angry.

However it plays out, let this be a lesson and a wake-up call to ANYONE who EVER thought it was a good idea to let TUMBLR run a serious event. I know you all love eachother ect. ect. Tumblr fandom community, but good intentions do not make a con - and you’ve proven yourselves not responsible enough to run a con.

DashCon needs to die here. It will not be coming back. Enough damage has been done.