In my revision of Tomorrow's Songs Today, I'm writing about the effect
of the pandemic and the attendant emergency regulations and hotel
closures on cons. Bill Roper told me he thinks that the 2020 NASFiC had
to pay substantial penalties because it cancelled before the hotel or
Ohio government had made it official that it couldn't be held.

I haven't been able to find anything definite on this. The convention's
domain has expired, so the website has gone away. The best I've found is
a File 770 article linking to a dead page and quoting it:

Like so many conventions affected by Covid-19, NASFIC
has been involved in some very challenging negotiations.
Because Ohio is trying to open up its economy, we are
likely to have some heavy cancellation fees imposed
by our facilities. Therefore, we are unlikely to be
able to offer any meaningful level of membership
refunds.

https://file770.com/columbus-2020-nasfic-updates-cancellation-post/

I can't find anything on whether they actually had to pay the
cancellation fees or managed to get out of them. It would be an
important data point, relevant to what filk concoms had to deal with, if
a NASFiC got whacked with penalties. Does anyone have more information?

Also, was it Discon III that kept its members hanging for a long time on
whether it would reschedule, because it could have been similarly
whacked for admitting the obvious before it was official?

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

In Message-ID:<uak7m4$1fmmf$1@dont-email.me>,
Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:

>I haven't been able to find anything definite on this. The convention's
>domain has expired, so the website has gone away.

I don't know the old site's name, so I can't try myself, but did you
try the wayback machine (archive.org)?

Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:
> Also, was it Discon III that kept its members hanging for a long
> time on whether it would reschedule, because it could have been
> similarly whacked for admitting the obvious before it was official?

Yes. Its website also kept insisting it would be held in a hotel
which had gone out of business.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

On 8/4/23 10:33 PM, Someone Else wrote:
> In Message-ID:<uak7m4$1fmmf$1@dont-email.me>,
> Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:
>
>> I haven't been able to find anything definite on this. The convention's
>> domain has expired, so the website has gone away.
>
> I don't know the old site's name, so I can't try myself, but did you
> try the wayback machine (archive.org)?

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, the website just transitions
from warnings that the con might be liable for large sums to thanking
members for a good convention.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200928092017/https://columbus2020nasfic.org/

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

On Saturday, August 5, 2023 at 6:42:42 AM UTC-4, Gary McGath wrote:
> On 8/4/23 10:33 PM, Someone Else wrote:
> > In Message-ID:<uak7m4$1fmmf$1...@dont-email.me>,
> > Gary McGath <ga...@mcgath.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I haven't been able to find anything definite on this. The convention's
> >> domain has expired, so the website has gone away.
> >
> > I don't know the old site's name, so I can't try myself, but did you
> > try the wayback machine (archive.org)?
>
> Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, the website just transitions
> from warnings that the con might be liable for large sums to thanking
> members for a good convention.
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20200928092017/https://columbus2020nasfic.org/

It was just 3 years ago. Surely some of the concom are contactable.

pt