This is an expansion of some sleep-deprived comments I made at the end of Dragon*Con. As you can tell, I have my concerns.

I’m going to have more to say on this. I don’t know if anyone who reads this blog cares very much, or if the people who care read this blog. But I don’t want to just grumble to myself. Please bear with me, and I’ll go back to teasing Phil Plait soon.

We just finished Dragon*Con for 2010. Once again, we had a little island of skepticism amidst the 35,000 attendees in downtown Atlanta. All the panels were well-attended and it seemed like the audience had a lot of fun.

Why do I feel we need to fix things?

The Skeptrack at Dragon*Con always attracts good crowds and good speakers. But it’s starting to look a lot like one of the TAMs in Las Vegas. I suppose this is natural, since the JREF organizes the TAMs and plays a big role in Dragon*Con. The Amaz!ng Meeting has justifiably become the model of how to run a successful convention. So what’s my frakkin’ problem?

My frakkin’ problem is that D*C is not a TAM. TAMs attract some 1,000 people who have paid about $350 each to talk to skeptics about skeptical issues. The audience at TAM is probably at least 90% dedicated skeptics. (A year ago, I would have thought it was 100%. But I know now there are many definitions of what makes a “skeptic.” If you are going to claim that Christians and other religious people cannot be skeptics, you are going to lower your percentage. You are also wrong, but that’s another topic.) With that many skeptics in the crowd, you can schedule some esoteric navel-gazing topics. In fact, you’re pressured to, because so many people have already had enough “Skepticism 101” talks.

D*C is not that. D*C has roughly 35,000 people who paid $50 to meet TV and film stars, talk about comics, or fantasy/sci-fi books and films, wear elaborate costumes, generally commune with like-minded fans, and soak in alcoholic beverages. (Okay, so it’s not entirely unlike TAM.) There are different options around every corner, and the main goal is to be excited and entertained.

Unfortunately, the schedule of talks in the Skeptrack room skewed hard to the esoteric navel-gazing.

Imagine you are a science fiction/fantasy fan. You’re walking around D*C with your giant schedule booklet. You see that there is a fan-led discussion about the differences between Joss Whedon’s vampires and those in the show True Blood. There is also a talk by Jason Momoa about some of the behind-the-scenes moments on the set of Stargate: Atlantis. You just saw Summer Glau walking into the autograph room. Your eyes finally go past the Skeptic Track schedule, and you see “Diversity and the Freethought Movement.” What is the average Dragon*Con attendee going to say?

There’s no way to tell, but I bet it’s not going to be “diversity? holy crap, that sounds great — Jason Momoa can piss off!” I think it’ll be something more like “I didn’t know C-SPAN was heOMGITSSUMMERGLAUOMGOMGOMG!” That’s assuming their eyes didn’t just gloss over and slide past the diversity panel without it registering.

Note that I am not saying the diversity talk was bad. I didn’t go, but I had several friends and at least one spouse actually on that panel. Knowing them, it was probably a perfectly interesting, educational, and hilarious talk. But the only people who are going to go to that are people who:

Know what the freethought movement is

Know there are issues with it regarding diversity

Are more interested in it than in everything else going on at that time

In short, it’s going to appeal to skeptics. In less short, it’s going to appeal to skeptics who are also part of the freethought crowd. In still longer, it’s going to appeal to skeptic freethinkers who want to hear about why skeptic freethinkers are mostly white. There is absolutely nothing in the title or the description to attract the type of person who normally comes to D*C. (That talk would go over well at TAM. In fact, I believe it has in the past.)

The result: We fill the room with a lot of familiar faces. People who have been to TAM, or people active in local skeptic groups. We end up talking to each other. The other 34,900 people go back to meeting the cast of Eureka.

It gets worse. I don’t know the percentage of religious people at D*C. In my informal observations, religious belief among sci-fi fans is less pronounced than among the general public, but smart money is still on the majority of the attendees being Christians. With that in mind, I was dismayed to see a talk titled “Why it Makes No Sense Not to be an Atheist and a Skeptic.” Not only are we alienating the majority of the D*C attendees (even the non-religious types are probably not coming to D*C for philosophical posturing), but we are once again stiff-arming our own attendees who either are religious or don’t want to shut out religious people. If you are religious and you see that talk listed, not only are you not going to attend, but you’ve just been soured on all the other topics in the track.

I didn’t go to that one, either. There are always other options at D*C.

I may be way off on this. If the goal of the skeptic track is to actually be another TAM for skeptics who couldn’t make it to Vegas, then it’s succeeding. If butts in chairs is the most important metric, then we seem to be on the right course.

If that’s the case, we’re missing a huge opportunity.

So what do we do?

I have some ideas. I’m going to be expanding on them some very soon here. I don’t know if any of them will make sense, but I do think we have to change things up before we start to stagnate in our own insulated skeptical bubble.

Stay tuned!