Update: Go here to read our interview with IFCon’s Ken Twyman.
On Tuesday, October 27, the plug was pulled on Victoria’s Island Fantasy Conference (IFCon), which was slated to be held on Friday, October 31 and Saturday, November 1. Event organizers have gone silent, their online presence deleted, and would-be attendees and vendors who aren’t getting refunds are up in arms.
The way IFCon was cancelled and the resulting behaviour from those involved has led many who were going to attend with questions.
Conference organizer Bill Code was allegedly admitted to a local hospital for a serious condition, which was the reason given as to why the conference was cancelled. Attendees and vendors who are out the money they spent on the convention are wondering why the convention had to stop because Code was ill.
Shortly after organizers gave the notice on Facebook, things got heated online. Within days, the point of contact for the conference was swearing to and insulting those who were going to attend IFCon, as well as threatening legal action to those speaking critically of the situation (he has since been relieved of his duties); the conference’s official site was taken down and Facebook page was deleted; updates, allegedly written by Code’s mother, were posted on Code’s Facebook account but with his mother’s name spelled two different ways. A Facebook page for people to talk about the situation was created under the name Hurt by IFCon 2015.
All the while, refunds were not being given and there was no further communications from the conference organizers. The name of Code’s business is IFC Productions; phone calls to the company’s phone number went straight to voice mail, which was full.
A Facebook post from organizers told people to not call the hospital, adding that they had asked the hospital to lie and say that Code was not admitted (the hospital confirmed to Nexus that he was admitted).
Adam Park, founder of local Japanese animation convention Tsukino-Con, says that his impression of IFCon was that they were “being very, very ambitious, to be generous, for a first-time event.”
“I had some concerns about how well it was going to be executed,” says Park. “They were expecting over a dozen industry guests. Knowing from convention experience how much an average guest costs, the expenses that would occur from that would necessitate them having a lot of attendees. Thousands of people. Typical range for a first-time Victoria convention would be around 1000 people; 2000 would be really good.”
One local retailer who had sold tickets urged people in a Facebook post to not ask local stores for refunds as many stores already gave the ticket money over to the IFCon team, meaning the stores would be paying for the refund themselves. (One local retailer, Lyle’s Place, have said they will honour all refunds for tickets they have sold, and another, Legends Comics & Books, have also said they will refund and deal with the financial loss. Online ticket seller eventbrite have also said they will refund out of their own money.)
This doesn’t help all ticket-buyers, though.
“I was supposed to attend and my mom and I paid $90 in person to Bill Code,” says would-be IFCon attendee Justine Robson. “They said they are offering refunds to people who ordered online and through eventbrite, but didn’t mention anything about the people who purchased in person. Now all of the IFCon Facebook pages are deleted and I can’t get ahold of anyone who was supposed to run the event.”
Conference organizers, who have said that they put $84,000 into the event (although the company printing the event’s materials said on Facebook they have not been paid, leading many to wonder where exactly the $84,000 went to), have remained silent. The event was to be held at Pearkes Recreation Centre; in an interview with the Times Colonist, facility manager Steve Meikl confirmed that they were paid some of the rental fee in advance.
But trouble started earlier than this for IFCon, when would-be guest Troma Films’ Lloyd Kaufman announced on Facebook on October 27 that he wouldn’t be at the event as he said IFCon could not honour his contract.
“This will certainly make people nervous about going with anything that’s not well established in the future,” says Park. “I don’t think it will overly hurt established conventions too much, but I think it will make some people more cautious about new projects in the future.”
Another event planner said on Facebook that people have told him they won’t pre-order tickets for his event because of what happened to IFCon.
As of November 5, 2015, a police file for IFCon had been started with Saanich Police and there had been no further word from IFC Productions.
IFC Productions has a Power Rangers Cruise scheduled for May 2016.
The way this event was handled was a total joke. If Bill is in the hospital, he should nit have gone dark and have such horrible communication. Illness is bad, but he has 84,000 un-accounted-for dollars; he owes his vendors and attendees an explanation for where that money is.
As for Ken, he has been a vitriolic ball of tantrums and unprofessionalism. From swearing at people asking questions to physically appearing at the workplace of inquirers to scre at them and demand they get fired from their jobs, he’s been harassing people at best and complicit in fraud at worst. And every time an article is written about how bad of a shitstorm IFCon was is written, Ken shows up in the comments crying about how nobody contacted him, despite piles of evidence showing what happens to those who DO contact him.
These two have hurt gaming and our subculture in Victoria, and I expect the trust they have destroyed will take a while to mend.
Amusing how the writer of this so called article FAILED to contact myself or Bill, But Like all the comments floating around, the story must be true because they say it is.
Absolute Joke
It’s kind of hard to contact people that disappear their websites and contact information, then refuse to respond to the many queries from reporters, vendors and would-be convention goers. By the way, who IS in charge right now, and how can they be contacted?
Ken
In what way have you made yourself or your joke of a company available to answer questions?
Multiple sources have asked for Bill to be left alone as he recovers so who exactly are people suppose to contact?
Clearly the money you took from people is gone, so be honest and explain what went wrong and where it was spent.
I have seen several of your Facebook posts so I urge you to take your time responding, perhaps have someone proof read it beforehand, and be thoughtful with your answers.
Ben why dont you claim to be another reporter. Looking for your 15 minutes clearly. Maybe you will get your name in a newspaper article so you can frame it. Why don’t you post all the screen shots Ben from London Drugs. When I grow up, I want to be just like you
Have you seen your own posts and your attitude regarding this situation Ken? It is you who is acting unprofessional. There is numerous photo evidence of you berating people on Facebook, from telling them to go **** themselves and making threats online.
It seems YOU are taking advantage of Bill’s poor health in a poor attempt to point fingers at others. All your excuses has been Bill this Bill that; I wish Bill all the best and for a speedy recovery but you should not be using Bill’s hospitalization as a crutch for your poor behaviour and blaming it all on others when clearly it is from internal mismanagement.
Mr. Pratt, I find your article needs more time spent on clarification and less time spent on trivial matters. The fact that this article on IFCon failed to inform annoyed me to no end. A good article should make one feel enlightened, not frustrated as they try to gather the pieces from what’s written on the page.
I have read a number of articles on IFCon and yours needs the most work.
Thank you for your time and for reading this.
This is NOT the first convention, perhaps the first under that name, but this would have been the third. The second was in 2009… There is no allegedly about it, Bill Code was admitted to the hospital in extremely critical condition. Twyman’s behaviour doesn’t speak for Bill, and I know if he is feeling anything at all at the moment it’s horror at the turn of events.
You also cannot judge future CONS or anything of the like by this one instance. One fact that’s well known is that Victoria does NOT make it easy to have events like this. There’s very little fan support, very little city support and a lot of grief for the promoter…You want the big names, but don’t want to pay the price to have them.
What has happened here is a tragedy. I don’t know why there wasn’t a safeguard in case of emergency situations, nor why the show couldn’t go on. However, I do know Bill, and he wanted IFCON to be a reality more than anything.
Of course there will be fall out to future events because of this event. To think otherwise is naive. Laying blame on the community, the city or otherwise is ridiculous. These factors were known from the start; to continue on becomes their responsibility to plan for and over come. Money was taken with no event ran in return for said money. Theft occurred. Period.