How about this:

Perhaps general interest conventions have suffered, but special interest conventions (gaming, anime, general visual media, media specific (specific movies, specific television shows, comics)) seem to be doing very well. Some of them, Dragon*con and San Diego Comicon, for example, are huge and still growing. Pax - www.pennyarcadeexpo.com/ - which started a couple of years ago, continues to grow.

Is convention fandom, and fandom itself, now hopelessly balkanized? Have we now reached a moment when gaming fans feel they have nothing in common with comic fans who have nothing in common with Serenity fans who have nothing in common with Tolkien fans, and who collectively feel they nothing to say and no need to socialize with each other?

Ghod, that's a depressing sentiment.

And you're right, there isn't much activity in this tribe. I'd kind of expected brief con reports, arrangements for meetups at conventions, announcements of new cons, etc. etc.

Well, from my observation, as someone who used to do more than 50 cons a year, is that many of the general interest cons have gotten too watered down and the special interest cons have drawn away a lot of the talent and people who used to help run things.

Also a big part of fandom has been military people for quite some time and most of them are away right now.

Add to this that some people are not going to certain conventions due to the politics of the convention or the locality where the convention is held, such as people who will not go to DragonCon as long as the State of Georgia and Gwinett county keep Ed Kramer (founder of DragonCon) in illegal incarceration year after year without due process or proper medical care.

Everyone is on lj? :)