For the last couple of years people have been asking us here at Infinite Frontiers if we have plans to run any more events or conventions. Those who attended Auto Assembly over the years since the first event back in 2000 have been asking if the convention was going to make a return or if we had any other plans in the pipeline. Certainly we’re no strangers to running events and social gatherings here and it’s part of our long-standing heritage. We were formed back in 1989 originally as a Doctor Who fan club, based around holding regular club meetings and gatherings and while we rapidly moved into digital publishing within a year, we soon moved back into running events with a Star Trek convention and a long running club which again held regular meetings before the advent of Auto Assembly.
However, times have changed and the current team is unlike any other that has come before it. It is the largest groups of people that we have had here at Infinite Frontiers since the mid 1990s and I would say that it is undoubtedly the most talented. Despite that, it’s also a team that brings new challenges. We’re incredibly diverse and have a wide range of interests and now that we have expanded and grown to cover far more than we have ever done in the past, it’s clear that the interests of many of our team are limited and don’t always cover the full range of what we do as a group.
This is great and I love the diversity of people that we’ve drawn to Infinite Frontiers, but that also brings with it difficulties. We know that not all of our team are interested in Transformers so taking the plunge and bringing back Auto Assembly as a convention would mean that not all of the team would be interested in being a part of it. Equally, if we were to run a video games event, again that wouldn’t appeal to all of our team. Furthermore if that wasn’t complicated enough, we’re a more culturally diverse team than ever before. In the past, the majority of our team have been based in the UK but now about a third of our team live in other parts of the world – Paraguay, Australia, USA, Finland – and our UK team members are spread all around the country.
On a more serious note, we also now have to think about our health. Many of us are not getting any younger with several of us now in our forties and many of us having some notable health problems. Several of us have had or are expecting surgery which is affecting our capacity to run events and we have to put our health first. Unfortunately we’re not getting any younger and we’re just not physically capable of running a large scale event any more after recent health scares and changes that we have had to cope with.
What does that mean for the future? Well, all of our websites will continue as normal and we hope will grow and evolve as we bring in new writers for Auto Assembly, Vita Player and the main Infinite Frontiers site, and bring plenty of new content and ideas to all of them. We won’t be running any more events but we certainly won’t rule out assisting other organisations with their events if we feel that we’re able to offer or contribute something positive towards them. I certainly won’t speculate or say anything more because it’s just generalising right now, but we have been involved in other events in the past as exhibitors so it’s not something we’d rule out if we had all the support we needed.
Thankyou for your support and understanding.
Simon Plumbe
Infinite Frontiers
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