here goes. i decided to write up my PERSONAL EXPERIENCE with Dashcon and the people running it. i was there while Dashcon was being founded. i was the head of one of the committees and i actually got to work pretty closely with one of the co-owners. so if you wanna learn about how Dashcon was founded and the downright horrific inner workings during that time keep reading. also if you just want a good ass laugh. the owners may have changed some of the methods they were using but I must say: Dashcon is one of the most unprofessionally run events i’ve EVER seen. right from its inception it was a train wreck. [featuring skype screenshots, wow!!]

so idk if many people are even familiar with how dashcon was started. It literally began as someone’s idea (WHY ISNT THERE A TUMBLR CONVENTION) and someone else took it and ran. Dashcon actually used to be called Tumbl-Con USA. They didn’t want to include Tumblr’s full name so they wouldn’t get sued or anything. In the end Tumblr made them change it because they weren’t affiliated with the con and didn’t want to make it seem so. While Dashcon was Tumbl-Con USA, they decided to create committees for each fandom to raise money for the convention itself. Their method would be to ask popular fanartists/fanfic writers to donate fanworks so that they could be auctioned off and the proceeds would go to the con. They first wanted to secure a convention area and get hotels. The way the committees were formed was absolutely fucked up, they literally put an open call on the blog and said “WHO WANTS TO FORM A COMMITTEE TO HELP US RAISE FUNDS?” they asked no questions whatsoever. If you wanted to make a committee for your fucking obscure ass fandom, you got it. 

Me, being the young-un I was, thought it would be cool if I joined a committee. I ended up becoming head of a committee just by asking to be since no one else had formed one for that particular fandom. They asked me to recruit people. It was rather simple, I just asked a few fandom friends. We all thought this would be a fun endeavor but had no idea how much work we’d be taking on.

So the first task would be to get some fanworks. We went all over this fucking website asking people but ultimately, for many of the artists and writers the con was just too little known and they didn’t want to expend time and energy on helping us out. Which made sense. The problem is, there was a HUGE bias problem with the admins. I mean huge. The admins were all a bunch of superwholocks, and at times it seemed to me like this con was all for THEM. honestly, I hate the fact that I didnt realize it sooner, and I spent so much time trying to help them. But anyway, the admins were all doing their best to help out the bigger committees, which coincidentally were Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Sherlock, and Doctor Who. Some committees, like The Vampire Diaries, were already making money out the wazoo just from donations.

Eventually the admins asked us to pick two guests we would be interested in bringing. I’m not sure why I didn’t realize this was a fucked up idea sooner, we barely had money for anything, much less for the guests some of the committees wanted to bring. I’m pretty sure the Sherlock fandom wanted to bring Benedict Cumberbatch and the Vampire Diaries committee was definitely looking to bring both Ian Somerhalder and Nina Dobrev. looking back this idea is laughable. But it’s really the admins’ fault, since they made it seem like it was possible and gave us “wings”, in a sense. anyway, i messaged another committee about helping us get a particular guest I didn’t think would cost too much to bring. They never got back to me. Like many other committees, they were stagnant for too long and ended up dissolving. As a committee head I had nowhere to put the money either, which led to ample confusion from just about everybody. Some committees had money and others didn’t. We were told every committee would be getting its own PayPal account, which I awaited.

Eventually I was told the following (Im the blue through the whole post):

Let me stress that this was completely out of the blue. Other committees were making money and suddenly every committee was subject to the same rules despite the fact that some committees were smaller than others. Some committees were even asking the admins for help with promo but just weren’t getting attention. I was head of one of those committees. The admins were constantly “busy” and were never available to talk on skype unless it was during a meeting. (By the way, practically EVERYTHING happened on Skype. Every meeting, even the committee head ones. In huge group chats that would bug out and not work. It was such a bad method, since some people had slow internet or their audio didn’t work.) The admins were the ones the committee heads were supposed to report to, and they wouldn’t even make themselves available for help. It was a true clusterfuck and believe me when I say committee members were ALWAYS confused as to what was happening and what they were supposed to be doing because there were so many admins/mods.

The committees were also ordered to plan panels and to make sure we had all the resources for one. So it was just one thing after another.

The committees were supposed to have frequent meetings on skype (You can probably imagine how well that was accomplished) and report the minutes of each meeting to the mods. Not only were people constantly dropping and joining each committee, but the mod you were supposed to report to was constantly changing. Also you had no idea whether or not they even looked at the minutes since they seemed to do nothing to help the struggling committees.

Every mod was saying different things, and they sure as hell did not seem like a unit in any regard, since there was also infighting.

Committees were told to raise money FOR THE ENTIRE CON. Then we’re told the money is just for floor space at the convention center and any guest appearances. Honestly, a clusterfuck.

The auctions for fanworks, once they started happening, were also a load of garbage to be honest. For some reason the admins decided to have them over on livejournal. All of the pages had different themes and some were extremely difficult to navigate. Literally, it was like they put zero thought into this whatsoever.

by the way, this was one of their early promos pics from before they decided the con would actually take place in Schaumburg.

lmao. yeah

hahahaha. what a joke

the mods were SO HELPFUL hahaha!!

my committee had to get help from another more successful committee because the mods had NO FUCKING IDEA what they were doing, and this was no secret among the heads.

And then the mods told us THIS. After which they started pressuring the treasurers of each committee to hook their bank accounts up. So there’s that.

just about sums it up.

and the fact that committee members were afraid of this happening just goes to show how unfriendly and hostile the mods could be.

this is how it was through the entire thing.

And then a mod said the thing about providing “start up funds” during a committee wide meeting!! Pretty incredible how they all were saying different shit, really.

I’m pretty sure this never fucking happened, either. If it did, it was only for big actors like Benedict and Misha Collins. Which Dashcon intended to bring, LMAO. They drew up a list one day of actors they wanted to try to bring and Collins was on there as well as Tom Felton. Fucking ridiculous.

Dashcon was and is run unprofessionally. that’s just fact.

here’s this. some conversations between me and Megg, future co-owner. at this point she was still in my committee as a normal member.

no one had fucking informed me of this, even though I was a fucking committee head and my committee had already made a video. I had to find out from her.

lmao she certainly changed her tone after becoming co-owner. for PR of course

there was this, too:

also, this happened:

after one of the mods told a committee member they were off their committee, the 13yr old then began posting things suicidal in nature. Dashcon should have acquired more professional help so they could have avoided things like this. (also i regret saying it wasn’t their fault because IT WAS THEIR FAULT)

then there was this. after each committee was told the con would try to bring guests for each one, they suddenly say they can only work on bringing 5 guests total. 

also, some of the heads had a meeting with an admin. she didn’t show up until 10 minutes after the scheduled time and then said this.

expecting the heads already in the skype chat to round up the other heads that were absent. PROFESSIONAL

Anyway, one day the mods put all the heads into one chat and informed us that they were trying to start a SHOW. yes. an actual filmed SHOW to help promote Dashcon. For some reason, we all believed it. this was one of the most bizarre things out of this whole operation. this conversation started Feb 24, 2013.

the link goes to this pic:

I have no idea why any of us believed him, let alone the Dashcon mods.

what the fuck???

okay. sure!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHHA. not only that, but this guy asked us to send OUR RESUMES so that he could pick a writing team. incredible.

the con’s art director was a true character!!!!

then this shit.

edit: here are some asks from the art director: X, X.

after this, the guy never talked to us again, and he was either booted or quit as Dashcon’s art director. All of this was extremely fishy and Im surprised the mods fell for it.

After this whole shit I quit as head and my committee was dissolved. 

This is a convention being run by teenagers with no amount of good experience running anything. From the beginning it was shitty, disorganized, messy, communication was HORRIFIC, etc. literally no one except for the mods (Roxanne in particular) knew what was going on, and she would often make changes with no warning. I’m not surprised it turned out like it did, the mods when I interacted with them were VERY unprofessional and irresponsible, and more than once I was bothered by the fact that they were handling so much money.

Personally, I don’t think the $17,000 is a scam, but I do think it was the result of extremely poor planning and naivete. The admins probably assumed the hotel would let them slide on not paying until the con was over. 

What I can say about Dashcon is that it started out as a sincere project but quickly became too much to fucking handle and it should have been left for dead once the admins saw that they wouldn’t be able to take care of all this shit. While I was working with them things never ran smoothly. Dashcon should honestly die with 2014.

PART 2

#dashcon  #tumblr  #just read this it took too long  

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