I had a good response to my suggestion about the value of doing a speculative fiction version of the Australian Government's 2020 summit. So I've started framing some potential ideas to see what people think. These are broad and some may overlap but I don't want to get too specific or prescriptive in overarching topics. I envisage running a forum over a week or so with various topics starting a day or two apart. Once we'd settled on a range of topics, I'd ask for volunteers to host various topics on their blogs and then kick it off in a week or two after that. 

Here are my initial thoughts on potential topics:

About excellence  -  helping writers produce better work
Commercialising your work  -  traditional and emerging opportunities for writers
Independent/small press publishing and distribution  -  more successful, more sustainable
Strengthening the community  -  getting the most out of fans, organisations, conventions and writing groups

I also wondered whether its worth canvassing issues like awards, their value and how they can be improved, and things like whether some sort of Australian speculative fiction writers association would be of any value. Maybe they fall under one of those categories or maybe someone will suggest a broader area. Or maybe they aren't important.

Speak loudly if you have any suggested changes or topics we could add. I'd like to keep the number of topics under discussion to less than 10 but inside those topics discussion could range quite broadly. 

Over to you for your thoughts.

I spent most of my extended (three-day) weekend reading material for the World Fantasy Awards. I puncuated the many pages with some music,  dinner with friends, watching some cricket and tuning in every now and then to the ABC coverage of the 2020 ideas summit. Frankly, it made for dull television, so I spent some time on the web tonight catching up with some of the great ideas put forward. 

And I got thinking - is it worth doing something similar for Australian speculative fiction writing?

What are the ideas that will shape the genre over the next decade?
How will writers best commercialise their work in the brave new world digital world?
What professional development opportunities will deliver value to genre writers?
And maybe most importantly - is thinking about genre writing in terms of Australia vs the rest of the world even productive?

Who knows what else. 

I'm going to ponder it for a while but if you've got ideas for topics and/or how it might be shaped, let me know. Stay tuned for more.