Everfree Network interview with Robert Picardo.

[kane_magus]

Watch on YouTube

Very brief gist, as this is explained much more fully in the interview itself: Last weekend (February 22-24) there was a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic/Brony convention in Las Vegas, called Las Pegasus Unicon. From what I understand, the convention ended about as well as the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, apparently. One of the highlights to come out of this, however, was that Robert Picardo, through John de Lancie's agent, was able to lend a hand during the fallout. Thus, the above interview with Everfree Network.

Comments

[dmjewelle.livejournal.com]

WOW does the interview detail how the con ended badly?

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's entirely clear yet what, exactly, happened. Some are saying that it was just horrific, gross incompetence on the part of the LPU staff, and others are speculating that it might have actually been some sort of ponzi scheme. All that I know, and which is mentioned in the interview as well, is that the con organizers apparently ran out of money due to not nearly as many people showing up as had been expected, the Riviera hotel kicked everyone out hours before the con was supposed to end, none of the guests of honor got paid, and everyone including the guests of honor who had been comped a hotel room were suddenly and unexpectedly on the hook to pay for them at the normal, hundreds of dollars prices. The staffs of other, bigger conventions, such as Bronycon and EverfreeNW (who were there as guests themselves, mind you) stepped in to try to help salvage what they could, while the actual LPU staff either just kind of sat there overwhelmed or skipped town entirely, depending on who you talk to. That link (http://www.laspegasusunicon.com/) I put in the original post above is the explanations/excuses of the LPU staff for what happened.

This forum thread (http://www.roundstable.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2305) is a pretty good "as it unfolded" account of what was going on at the con, particularly from around this post (http://www.roundstable.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2305&p=331172&hilit=convention+mismanagement#p331172) onward, which is when they started noticing that everything was going pear-shaped. I'm pretty sure that the posters "ixnay" and "kefkafloyd" in that thread are people who were actually present at the con when it all went down.

At any rate, it got bad enough that people are running auctions and donation drives (http://www.laspegassist.com/) to try to help those that were adversely affected by this fiasco.

As someone from the periphery of the periphery demographic who doesn't attend cons and who is looking at all of this from the outside edge, all I can say is that the whole situation is kind of a little bit completely ludicrous.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Here (http://www.roundstable.com/2013/03/01/fear-and-loathing-in-las-pegasus/) is a much more comprehensive rundown of what happened, at least from the perspective of one of the vendors (that same kefkafloyd from the thread I linked to above).