More About WSFS Structure

[kevin_standlee]

I was talking with cherylmorgan this evening about the discussion about WSFS structure on hollister2008.

In that discussion, this question was asked:

Why there isn't a President of [WSFS], a Vice President, a Secretary or Treasurer for the Society?

My response was that such positions weren't necessary and wouldn't have anything to do. Cheryl pointed out that this is only if you were stupid when you added the jobs. That's true; if we created the positions, we would feel a need to give them some jobs to do. We could, for instance, make them responsible for making sure Worldcons happen and giving Worldcon committees orders.

Which those committees would probably refuse to follow. Worldcon committees are individually much like members of the United Nations, sovereign within their own borders. A Worldcon committee can to a great extent tell WSFS, to the extent that WSFS exists, to go climb a tree with no repercussions other than the potential for their individual convention members complaining about it.

We're a volunteer organization. We can't compel people to do anything. (And if you say, "You could sue them," then you just lost the game, and thank you for playing. Lawsuits are among your last resorts, not your first.) As Cheryl noted, local conrunning groups are, on the whole, run by local fans who have some respect and prestige and are worked by people who respect the individuals and organizations involved sufficiently to take instructions from them. That's fine within a local context. But what happens when a group of primarily American, Canadian, and British conrunners tells an Australian Worldcon how to run their convention? I can imagine it, but I won't print it here. And how could this hypothetical WSFS Inc. enforce their edict?

While there might be advantages of a centralized, permanent, incorporated WSFS, the primary reason it doesn't happen is political, in that fans are fractious and independent-minded and don't like other people telling them what to do. It's something of a wonder we get as much accomplished as we do now.

Comments

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

Actually, the current setup creates a lot of goodwill. Everybody knows that nobody will be in charge for long. Any problems that arise don't carry over to the next group; any accomplishments that happen only give credit to the people who do them. This makes it much easier for people to work together, where they would naturally form longer-term factions in a more stable organization.

[timill]

if we created the positions, we would feel a need to give them some jobs to do.

I'd flip that around: we wouldn't create the positions unless we had jobs that needed doing and nothing else would do the trick.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Agreed; I was of course responding to someone saying, "Why don't we have them?" and my first reaction is, "Because we don't have any jobs for them to do that are not being done better by other means."

Well...

[johnnyeponymous.livejournal.com]

I sometimes think that people oppose the idea because they're affraid that it'll be them thrust into the Presidency.

In all seriousness, I'm betting that a WSFS permanent heirarchy could never work, but there is merit to the idea of at least a permanent committee to resolve disputes and deal with possible lawsuits and deal with Mark Protection (which already exists as I understand it).

Chris

WSFS Permanent Bodies

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

There is, as you said, one permanent WSFS body: The Mark Protection Committee. The MPC is the descendant of what was originally called the Standing Committee, and its structure (nine elected members, appointees from current, future, and past two years' WSFS-sanctioned conventions) is based on the structure proposed for the WSFS Board of Directors during the 1970-80s incorporation discussions. (Which died out before I arrived, so I'm working from other people's recollections.)

For a while, the Business Meetings started referring more and more things to the Standing Committee, although its primary issue was dealing with service mark registrations. Some people appear to have resented this as a form of "creeping incorporation," and in the mid-1980s, enough such people attended the Business Meeting to change the committee's name to Mark Registration and Protection Committee (later shortened to just Mark Protection Committee). For what it's worth, the change was only to the committee's title. The Constitution never actually defined the Committee's authority, so the name change didn't actually change anything technically.

Instead of continuing to refer many matters to the MPC, the Business Meeting has decided to rely mainly on ad hoc committees continued year to year as needed (such as the Hugo Eligibility Rest of the World (HEROW) Committee, which sometimes proposes eligibility extensions to non-US-published works), and in two cases establishing standing committees of the Business Meeting (which has been ruled to be different from standing committees of WSFS and can be done by standing rule rather than constitutional change), including the Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee and the Worldcon Runners Guide Editorial Committee. There is often a substantial overlap of membership between these committees -- every member of the NPFSC is either a primary or alternate member of the MPC, for instance.

So WSFS, having found one specific case (service marks) in which it's difficult or impossible to have a specific Worldcon committee do the task, established -- hesitantly -- a permanent body to handle it. That committee (and I'm the current Chairman) has no independent funding source and relies upon donations from Worldcon committees and individuals to keep running.

Traditionally, most Worldcons (those that can afford it) have donated $1 per site selection voter to fund the MPC's ongoing work. Some have donated more. Torcon 3, for instance, just donated CAD3100 to fund the cost of registering the service marks in Canada.

The MPC tries to whenever possible spend its money in the same country in which it was donated; there is also a long-term policy of registering the marks in every country that has hosted at least two Worldcons, or where money becomes available.

Last year, Interaction paid, as part of its donation to the MPC, the cost of renewing one of the UK service marks that was up for renewal. (Service marks have to be periodically renewed or they lapse.)

To the extent that WSFS has a chief executive officer, I'm in; however, I'm more like the leader of the Continental Congress than the President of the USA.

Re: WSFS Permanent Bodies

[timill]

The standing committees of the BM aren't really standing; they're appointed de novo each year. The BM could, one year, decide to appoint nobody to the committees.

Or so the rationale goes...

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Of all the ways to run a convention this is probably the most libertarian. I'm surprised that some of the libertarian types haven't decided it should be applied to all conventions. Of course with conventions that take place year after year in the same area I think things end up with more of a stable committee out of necessity, but I'm surprised the the libertarian types haven't insisted that local cons adopt the same structure.

[nitroace.livejournal.com]

Loscon does. While it is overseen by the Board of Directors of the LASFS, a new convention chair is elected each year by the members of the LASFS in a bid process. The chair need not be a member of the Board of Directors. That chair decides the theme and chooses a committee. Often it is the same people, but not always. People change positions around from year to year. The committee chooses their staff. The LASFS Board of Directors does very little to interfere with the Chairman's or Loscon Committee's decisions. If it were apparent that the current chairman was doing his/her best to run the convention into the toilet, then the board would step in. So far, I don't believe this has happened. I believe most local/regional conventions are run in this manner. There is no permanant committee, although the committee is drawn from mostly the same pool of people each year. Worldcon is not that much different in that regard. I'm sure Kevin can explain the "Permanent Floating Worldcon Committee"TM better then me. One local exception to this is the Gallifrey One conventions here in Los Angeles. Gallifrey has a permanant committee that rarely changes from year to year. It's a smaller convention and most of us have been doing it for almost 2 decades. We can do it in our sleep now. And often do.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

But it's still overseen by a board of directors, even if they haven't actually used their powers and I would assume that since it is run by the same club from year to year that it would be taking place under the same incorporation. The structure looks more like a corporation (board and shareholder elections) rather than a succession of individuals or small groups assembling a team each year out of variously experienced people with the goal of getting one event run.

Meanwhile in Denver Linda Nelson has been con chair for 16 years (and she'd been con chair twice before that). At this point though theoretically someone else could bid no one would and if she decided to step down I rather think that the con runners would meet to select a new chair rather like a papal conclave from one of their own or she would have been grooming a successor.

And most cons I've heard of have a corporate structures and incorporations in some fashion that continue year after year until the con dies.

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

It is very Libertarian in organization. As a Learn more about this, it makes sense to do it this way. It lets the local bid committees make the decisions and that is crucial to the floating con.