WHAT'S SWOT?

By Martin Easterbrook

Since there is going to be a meeting in Germany to discuss a possible Berlin bid, I thought it might be useful to repeat an exercise I found incredibly valuable during the planning of Intersection.

SWOT is a management exercise which asks the people concerned to look at the organisation they are running from the points of view of: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

My apologies in advance if sometimes politeness and tact do get lost in the exercise, but as Gary said : I'm all for the idea of a German Worldcon, for several reasons, but I do not think it would be doing anyone a kindness to throw someone, anyone, directly from a position of having never planned and organised a con of no larger than 500 people to planning and organising a Worldcon of over 3000 people.

Here's my 2 pfennigs' worth:

STRENGTHS

• Natural seeming follow-on from ConFiction, Intersection
• Central geographical location in Europe
• Stable German economy and government
• Apparent enthusiasm for the idea in the UK (at least on intersmof)
• The Berlin Wall
• Dutch support?
• Raumschiff Orion (just part of a German SF culture that people here aren't aware of)
• The Heidelberg Worldcon
• The Freucon Eurocon
• A Berlin Worldcon bid is an immediate attention grabber
• General NA support for outside-NA bids

WEAKNESSES

• Lack of local large conrunning experience
• Low visibility of German fans in NA
• Berlin is not perceived as a good holiday location
• Lack of the US team of supporters needed to run bid parties etc
• Language barrier
• Greater financial uncertainty of a non-NA con (how can you budget a con that could be 2000 or 6000?
• High cost of living in Germany (although hotels may be cheaper than UK?)
• Low number of Worldcon attending/voting Europeans
• High cost of sending people across the Atlantic
• Lack of specific opportunities to get more involved in NA Worldcons
• General weakness of the Eurocon

OPPORTUNITIES

• A German bid would be a proper European bid (Even a badly organised and diffuse fannish continent has huge potential resources)
• A German bid would (hopefully) act as the core for European fandom to crystallise around. A European fandom in 2000 (voting date) and in 2003 (run date) could potentially be very different from what it is now
• A lot of NA/UK/Dutch conrunners would probably volunteer to work on the con if a way could be found to co-ordinate them effectively
• Possible "official" German/EEC support of some kind
• General fannish avaiability of access to the Internet, video, printing technology has increased enormously in the past few years. All these can be used to run a bid in a different way than the traditional one. A way that gives an outside of NA bid less of a disadvantage
• An outside US bid has enormously greater flexibility in choosing a site than an NA one. A German convention in Holland (or even Glasgow) is possible. I wouldn't totally commit to Berlin too soon unless there were some financial inducements.

THREATS

• The Nazi issue
• The British "sense of humour" when applied to Germany
• Possibility of the bid becoming a US vs Europe scenario
• A powerful US bid emerging for 2003
• Any kind of world political/financial upheaval. (Ask Kees how many memberships the Gulf War build-up cost ConFiction)
• ESFS (this is a group that had worked well during the cold war but it isn't what we need now and they may not be happy to pass things along to someone else.
• Changes in the committee circumstances and interests over the next 8 years ( You could kill someone and still not be sentenced to something for so long)