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Ponyville Live! is Attending Nightmare Nights Dallas 2015, Last...


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Ponyville Live! is Attending Nightmare Nights Dallas 2015, Last Convention for PVL Coverage in North America:

Howdy, everypony! Silver Eagle here, director of the Ponyville Live network.

Today I have a bit of a mixed announcement…some good news, and some bittersweet, somewhat sad news. Let’s start with the good news.

As many of you know, for the last two years Ponyville Live! has attended Nightmare Nights Dallas each fall, and provided live streaming and recorded coverage of almost every panel throughout the whole weekend. In keeping with that tradition, we’re happy to announce that we will be attending NMND 2015 on October 23-25, and we will be streaming it straight to our homepage.

Without a doubt, this is one of our favorite conventions to attend every year. The team running the event are top-notch, and the guests they bring in are phenomenal. We’ll be working overtime to bring you as much of the convention as we can, and we’ll make sure it’s all recorded so you don’t miss a thing.

As good as our footage may be, though, there’s nothing like seeing the convention in person. If you’re still on the fence about whether or not to go, maybe we can sweeten the deal a little for you: if you enter code “PVL10″ when buying your convention tickets, you’ll get 10% off just like that. It’s our treat to you, because we really want to see you there.

If you’re going to NMND 2015, you should also come see us at the PVL table! We’ll be situated just outside the main events hall, overlooking the downstairs bar and restaurant area. Just listen for the pony music! We even have a free Azura Peavielle card for Twilight Sparkle’s Secret Shipfic Folder that we’ll give you just for stopping by, so that’s all the more reason to stop by.

…and if you needed another reason to come and visit us, that brings me to my second announcement:

After Nightmare Nights Dallas 2015, Ponyville Live! will be retiring its free convention coverage services in North America.

Yep, that’s right folks. Come say hello to us at our table, because from this point forward, we won’t be manning tables and handling convention videography for conventions in the United States and Canada.

You may be asking, “Why?”, so allow me to answer with a few short reasons that should hopefully explain our decision:

  • Conventions are expensive (for us). For three years, we’ve provided our services to conventions across the continent completely free of charge. We did this because of our love for the fandom and our desire to see it served well. Unfortunately, for us that came at a great expense. If you think visiting the convention in your neighboring city is expensive, just imagine flying an entire team out from across the country, lodging them and their equipment, and feeding them all weekend long. It adds up fast, and it’s beginning to catch up with us.

  • Conventions aren’t our main focus. Believe it or not, Ponyville Live! is much more than just a group that goes out and covers conventions. We are a network of partnered radio stations, video streams, and over 50 of the fandom’s favorite podcasts and shows. While our streams were popular in our early years, they’ve seen a sharp decline as time goes by, and they now reflect a very small part of our audience. Despite this, they’re still a huge percentage of our expenses. By comparison, keeping our entire network of web sites, data services, radio servers and other infrastructure running is actually very affordable. Retiring convention coverage lets us focus on making that experience better.

  • Conventions are stressful (for us). Many of you have never taken on the daunting task of flying hundreds of pounds of equipment and dozens of staff out to conventions, but for those of us who have done it time and time again, it’s a very stressful process. Not only are you behind a camera working all weekend long, keeping you from experiencing much of the convention experience yourself, but when the convention ends, your work isn’t even done. There’s weeks of editing, remastering, rendering and uploading to do, all of which cut into personal (or, worse yet, working) time well outside the original con weekend. All of this workload conspires to make the process seem more like a chore than a fun hobby, which it was always meant to be in the first place.

  • Conventions are political. Not every convention likes to admit this, but the convention business, and by extension the press and media role in it, is a heavily politicized affair. There are powerful alliances and personal connections that define every aspect of how a convention conducts itself, and what groups it works with. In choosing to cover conventions, we thrust ourselves into that political world without fully understanding it, and more often than not, it’s left us feeling a little cynical about the work we do as media ponies. When your world is a political one, it’s more about who you know than the quality of work you do, and as an engineer at heart, that’s always bothered me deeply. I’m looking forward to PVL moving forward as an objectively positive service created for the fans by the fans, rather than a political entity with complex ties and drama.

So, what does this mean for PVL?

First of all, our web site, apps, stations, streams and podcasts aren’t going anywhere. Our generous donors on Patreon pay for a huge portion of those monthly expenses, and connecting pony people with the great media the fandom creates is something we’ll always be passionate about. That’s not changing now.

As for our plans outside of North America, that still remains to be seen. We plan to cover at least another year of conventions in Europe, but it is very possible we will begin winding down coverage work there as well, for many of the same reasons outlined above.

We do still plan to conduct interviews on occasion with show staff and voice actors. Interviews are a much simpler process than our normal videography work, and don’t represent nearly as much of a financial, emotional or political hurdle.

Who will cover the conventions? That I’m afraid I don’t know. Many conventions have already begun recording their own panels and events, and this will likely continue. There are some independent groups that offer services similar to ours, but it’s possible some conventions may simply not be recorded.

Make no mistake, I’m very sad to be announcing the end of an era for our organization. At the same time, though, I’m relieved to be taking the load off my team’s (and my own) shoulders, and helping us focus on what truly makes us happy as a team. I hope you’ll agree that in the long run, this is for the best.

Thank you, as always, for being a part of the Ponyville Live! family. I hope the work we do helps make your day a little brighter, and I admire any of you troopers out there who actually read through another of my famously long posts. Stick around; there’s lots of great stuff to come. /)

Silver Eagle
Network Director
Ponyville Live!

 

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