I'm very sure members in the region can always arrange for the meet-up. It is just the bigger conventions and such that we are missing out and thus stopping my membership application. I don't personally know them yet, but i know people behind the Virts and Bicycle Visions are very nearby me. Arranging to meet up (depending on if they want to ) is one thing. Missing out on launches, new technology, new stuff, or even talking to Tom Dawson, Jackson or Bill Kalush personally at bigger conventions is another.
Maybe the audience here is not as huge as it is in the US, but i thought it would be nice to see such conventions held in Europe and in Asia for members from that continent. After all, an air ticket to Taiwan (since EPCC is there) is much cheaper compared to an air ticket to the US.
I know many factors apply, and creating a "membership club" isn't that easy. Most probably it is just a ranting from me filled with jealousy. I just thought it would be nice to see international members getting the good stuff for once.
Well, this "big stuff" you're talking about is really just one thing: the annual convention. One per year, that's pretty much it. Everything else, any smaller gatherings or what have you, just happens as it happens.
Launches, new tech, new stuff? What are you talking about? It's only in the last few conventions that they've even been getting deck artists and people talking about modern decks! For a long time, the club was largely concerned only with vintage and antique cards - this pretty much precluded the odds of them talking to the original artists of, for example, the Bicycle Rider Back, or any of the pre-Civil War decks...
So while it's new and a big deal to you, it's just as new and just as big a deal to the rest of us!
You miss out on talking to people at conventions? Have you considered ASKING? Lee Asher has had at least two tours in Asia in the brief time I've known him, just over two years. Bill Kalush is there often for business - and his wife's family is from China, if I'm not mistaken. Lawrence Sullivan is based in Hong Kong, as is Zenneth Kok - and Zen has the Coterie of Prestidigitation Artists there as well. There's a pretty healthy number of "card people" who either visit the region or live there! Extend these people an invitation and you might just get what you're looking for! If you're fortunate, they can squeeze you into their pre-made travel plans.
If you spoke with Tom Dawson about seriously organizing a convention in your hemisphere, I think he'd be happy to lend any support he could, including getting the word out and trying to arrange for big-ticket names to be there. For what it's worth, I'd be happy to try reaching out to a few people and seeing what can be done about visiting.
Let me put this in the simplest possible terms - you will get out of this club, or any other club you ever belong to that's a genuine club and not simply a promotional tool, exactly what you put into it. If you want to have a cool con on your side of the world, YOU are the only thing stopping you!
The first Star Trek convention in the early 1970s had perhaps a few dozen attendees. I'd guess the first San Diego Comic Con wasn't much larger. Both are now HUGE institutions. It all starts SOMEWHERE. Why not make it start with YOU? Get together some friends, talk about what you'd like to do for your first-ever Asian 52+J con, and get in touch with us back here so we can offer any assistance we can to make it at least a modest success and perhaps the start of something much bigger down the road. I'll talk to anyone I can about coming to see you, in my part of the world as well as yours - and I doubt I'm the only person in the club willing to assist.
Are you in the club now? I noticed you don't have the club rank.