my first Worldcon

At the LACon panel on "Memories of Worldcons Past," I asked each panelist to begin by identifying their first Worldcon, and by telling an anecdote about it, preferably something funny and that reveals something about how worldcons past were different than they are now. Here, somewhat expanded, is mine:

It turns out I've been around longer than any of the other panelists. My first Worldcon was 1976 in Kansas City, MidAmeriCon - "Big MAC" it was called, mostly out of fears that it would be uncontrollably large.

For most of their existence, Worldcons had been under a thousand people. But lately they'd been getting larger, and in the last few years increasing rapidly: 1972 had 2000 people, 1973 had 3000, 1974 had 3500. The 1975 Worldcon was the first one in Australia, so nobody expected that to be very large, but what would happen in 1976? Would it be 4000, 6000, or what?

In the end it turned out to be not much more than 3000, but the convention went into a frenzy of planning for a really large turnout. Instead of the traditional banquet to present the Hugos, they rented a local theater. That was the first time that was done. Another innovation of MidAmeriCon's was the invention of escalating membership fees: if you bought early, your fee was less expensive than if you bought later. This is now so normal that many may not be aware it was once an innovation, but at the time many people were furious at this.

But the biggest innovation of all had to do with security. MidAmeriCon decided that using name badges as authorization to enter convention areas wouldn't work: they were too easily lost, and people would wear them in various spots, some hard to see or hard for security to spot quickly when trying to clear large numbers of people.

So they came up with something new and never done before, and oh how they chortled in the progress reports when they told the members about it. But they wouldn't say what the security device was, and you didn't find out until you checked in for the convention and found that it was:

A hospital I.D. bracelet. Plastic, with the MAC logo printed on it.

You were supposed to wear these for the entire five days of the convention. In theory, at least, they were unremovable without being cut off. But wearing an I.D. bracelet in the hospital is one thing, during a convention was another. They became a nuisance, sliding around your wrist, as you tried to use your hands; and they got clammy and grotty if you tried to shower with the bracelet on.

So, unlike the escalating membership fees, as far as I know no other fannish convention has tried something like that, though other types of conventions have.