Worldcon Day 1: Hello, Hugo

[kevin_standlee]

I slept clear until 10 AM this morning, which made me feel better, but meant that by the time Lisa and I finally managed to make our way outside, there was nowhere we could find for breakfast other than the Denny's across the street. However, we saw other fans there and did the elevator pitch for Worldcon to one of the servers, who might come down on his day off tomorrow to take in the convention.

We started to take in parts of the exhibits today. There was a mechanical bull running today only. I would have taken a shot at it, but after I pinched a nerve in my back playing whirlyball at a work function a few years ago, I determined that I can't do things like that anymore. Lisa helped her friend pcornelius set up the Luna Project table and sat with him for parts of the afternoon, while I had a panel to do.

The panel at 3 PM was "The WSFS Business Meeting: How Does it Work." I've previously done this as a workshop rather than as a panel discussion, and I wasn't sure how well this would go, but in fact it was pretty good. Martin Easterbrook did a fine job setting questions for Mark Olson and me to answer, as did the audience. At the start, there weren't many people there, but more filtered in, and many of them did have serious questions about how the process worked. I was delighted by this writeup of the panel posted only a short time later that, while technically not quite right in tiny particulars, is generally correct and does an excellent job of summarizing what we discussed. (My thanks to Cheryl for spotting this write-up, which I saw her Tweet while I was sitting waiting for the Opening Ceremonies to start.)

LSC3's Opening Ceremony had Toastmaster Paul Cornell as the Olde Tyme Western Barkeep introducing the convention's special guests, which he did in inimitable fashion. I tried taking photos, but I don't think they're going to turn out. The convention was officially opened, and then Hugo base designer Vincent Villafranca unveiled the 2013 Hugo Award Base Design. At the conclusion of the ceremony, I followed Glenn Glazer as he carried the trophy to the Hugo Exhibit, where it was immediately placed on display. Then I took photos of it (moving it with the permission of the Exhibits team) in an attempt to get photos for the Hugo Awards web site. (As I took them, there's no question of giving permission for journalistic and other legitimate uses.)


I've posted the rest of the photos to my Hugo Awards Flickr set.

I'm not really thrilled with these photos. Hugo Award trophies are a real pain to photograph. I hope to remind future Worldcon committees that it would be helpful to have their trophy designers provide nice photos taken under controlled conditions for the purpose of posting to TheHugoAwards.org precisely because when people come looking for photos of Hugo Awards, they are most likely coming to THA.org and we want the photos they find to be the best we can do.

After Opening Ceremonies, Linda Deneroff and I caught up with Lisa and the three of us went over to the food court to grab something quickly for dinner before our next commitment. Linda and I had to be back at the convention center for the 7 PM WSFS Mark Protection Committee Meeting, and Linda had signed up for the San Antonio Ghost Walk for 8:30.

The MPC Meeting went very quickly: nine minutes, in fact. That's because nearly everything we needed to do had been done in advance by e-mail, and everything we'll have to do later needs to wait until the new members have been elected and appointed and we can set the agenda and policy for the coming year. We settled on our meeting plans for the rest of the weekend and discussed things in general, then adjourned.

I spent much of the next hour or so smoffing with people, discussing, for instance, certain mathematically-possible-but-unlikely scenarios in Site Selection that are not intuitively obvious. If, for instance, there is an absolute dead head for last place in the balloting, all of the tied candidates are eliminated simultaneously, which isn't an obvious thing to most people. Example: Assume nobody votes None of the Above or strange write-in votes. Ignore No Preference votes; they're the same as if you didn't vote at all. Now imagine that at the end of the first round of voting, the results are:

Helsinki: 400 votes
Spokane: 300 votes
Orlando: 300 votes

With 1000 votes cast, you need 501 to win. Nobody has a majority, so you have to eliminate the last-place candidate. But Spokane and Orlando are tied for last place at 300 votes each, so they both are eliminated, and Helsinki, the only candidate left in the race, will win no matter how the two other bids' ballots are marked.

Again, cases like this are highly unlikely in site selection, but they are possible, and I'm sure that if something like this ever does happen, there will be screams of outrage from the eliminated bids.

Returning to the hotel, I wrestled with getting some of the Hugo photos on to the Hugo web site, adding the 2013 Hugo Award Trophy page, editing the 2013 Hugo History page, and posting the announcement to the site. This takes longer than you might think, particularly because the internet connection on my smartphone is very slow here. Maybe we don't have a clear line of sight to the nearest cell phone tower, but I'm getting only a dribble of signal.

After finally getting the official stuff done and having set Flickr to uploading the photos I could take, I headed out to the parties. Lisa had already been at some of them. Helsinki's party is just a few doors down from us, and Orlando and Spokane have a pair of suites facing each other a flight of stairs away. This is a real advantage in having volunteered for the party-buffer rooms. However, it does mean we feel a little trapped, as going anywhere other than the Party Zone in the high 30th floors means waiting for an elevator and hoping you'll get back.

Just before midnight, we headed in. We can't stay up this late. We have to be up earlier than most people, particularly because we need to be at the Business Meeting earlier than most people so that we can get Lisa's camera set up. Fortunately, we have breakfast fixings in the room, or else it would be a very expensive room service order come morning.

Comments

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for your post, and for the photos of the Hugo base! Good point about the usefulness of having professional-grade photos of the Hugo Award readily available coming into the convention.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

It might be useful to arrange with someone a time with a set-up and a photographer at a future Worldcon Hugo Award display to get good photos.

Of course there might be enough in California to do the job con hopping out here.

Maybe set Andy on it?

[pwilkinson.livejournal.com]

The write-up you mention was also posted to LJ (http://katsudon.livejournal.com/888410.html).

On the dead-heat for last place scenario - if it happens this time, you go by whatever the currently-agreed rules say, and from your description, this means eliminating both last-place candidates. However, I can think of a couple possible (and incompatible) ways of tie-breaking that do seem to be more or less in the spirit of IRV:

- Postpone the next count for the moment, and do a re-count, using all votes, between just the last-place candidates. Assuming that there is not another tie, eliminate the candidate who now comes last and proceed to the next count.
- The quantum version: carry out all versions of the next count in which just one of the last-place candidates has been eliminated. Collapse to the version in which most transfers have gone to the other last-place candidates and continue.

There may be others.

By the way, what happens under the current rules if all candidates tie on any ballot?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The only defined tie-breaker for WSFS Instant-Runoff elections is what's defined in our parliamentary authority, the current edition of Robert's Rules of Order, Newly Revised. The tie-breaker there is how many first-preference votes each of the tied candidates gets. That's why I simplified the scenario above. In a more likely scenario, there will be a handful of votes for None of the Above and ineligible hoax candidates. If, after you eliminate them, you get the count shown above, there is a much more likely chance that you can break the tie between the bottom two, and thus will be able to eliminate only one of them.

If all the site selection candidates are tied and you can't break the tie by the method above, it's an unresolved dead heat, and in that case, the WSFS Business Meeting gets to decide which candidate wins. Essentially you fall back to the original site-selection system. Prior to the early 1970s, the site of future Worldcons was decided exclusively by the vote of the Business Meeting. That system is still in the constitution; it's just left behind as one of the fallback mechanisms for cases when the ballot produces no winner.

In other WSFS elections, unbreakable ties are also possible. Traditionally, ties for the WSFS Mark Protection Committee are chosen by random choice like a coin flip or drawing lots. (This only happens if the tied candidates cannot all be seated; if the number of tied candidates are less than or equal to the number of seats available, all the tied candidates win seats.) For the Hugo Awards, if there is a tie for first place, all of the tied candidates win the award.

[bigblued.livejournal.com]

'it would be helpful to have their trophy designers provide nice photos taken under controlled conditions"

That's going to be a tough one. In most scenarios, the base and the rocket meet for the first time at the convention. The designers could certainly provide nice photos of the base, but the Hugo Award Committee would need to send them a rocket ahead of time to get the two together.

And even the best photos, taken in the best settings, usually need a little time in Photoshop. http://sewardstreetstudios.com/hugos/2013/2013-hugo-sm.jpg

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Oh, nice work on the Photoshop front!

I think the designer usually has the use of one rocket during production. It's rather needed to confirm the attachment mechanism works as expected, not to mention other physical and aesthetic design issues.

[bigblued.livejournal.com]

That has not been my experience. I have an advantage that I now have a couple rockets on hand to do just that. The first time around, I had to trust the specifications in the competition information. But it is a fairly standard bolt so that wan't a problem. As for aesthetic issues, I have several "mock rockets" I made out of foamcore.

But each committee is different so it may be handled like you suggested in other cases.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of a presentation at Typecon several years back. Type designers were working on the typography for the Xbox (or Xbox 360), but everything was so hush-hush top secret that they weren't allowed to see anything about the equipment or interface as they were developing the typography for it. Just a few arm-waving specs...that kept changing. Talk about handicapping your designer!

It makes sense that the design competition be based on written specs only -- Worldcons can hardly send rockets out to everyone who says they want to enter a Hugo base design. But once the base designer is selected -- either by competition or by working with a specific artist -- sending a rocket for use in the fabrication process only makes sense. Especially since Worldcons seem to have a practice where the designer ends up with both a base and a rocket by the end.

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

Again, cases like this are highly unlikely in site selection, but they are possible, and I'm sure that if something like this ever does happen, there will be screams of outrage from the eliminated bids.

And a very loud call for changing the way things are counted so we don't eliminate all the US options. Name aside ("Worldcon"), Helsinki is hardly an easy to reach or high on most bucket lists destination of the average voter and I imagine if it won "by default" (which is how it would be interpreted) over 2 more accessible sites (you *can* drive to either of the other 2, not that you'd want to from most parts of the country), you'd hear a loud call for changing how things worked.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

???

And if the same scenario played out in a race between 3 non-US bids?

While I can see the eliminated bids and their supporters having a lot to say about how the system worked in Kevin's scenario, deliberately favoring US bids in the way you suggest is repugnant to me.

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

Geri,

I totally agree with you - and it wouldn't be my cup of tea either - but I'm reporting how I think it will fallout should that extremely unlikely scenario occur - not what I *want*, but what I expect the vocal response will be.

Also, I wasn't talking about deliberately favoring US bids (tho some of the complainers might), I was suggesting those vocal complaints would want a system that didn't double eliminate because of ties - ever.

I would prefer a healthier response - but I've seen far too much vitriolic response to expect anything other than vocal objection to all US sites being eliminated at once, repugnant or not.

And would the same happen in 3 non-US bids? I suspect if the cities were "well recognized" and "major hubs" for US travelers, no - but if the winner were less known and harder to get to? Probably, no matter how offensive some of us might find that result.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I'm relieved those wouldn't be your views and I've seen enough debate over the years to know that mileage varies in ways that are completely outside my oft-times overly idealistic sense of fannish values.

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

Oh my! I clearly need to edit better in the future if I came across that way!

I've always been more in the camp of folks like you and Kevin & Bruce Pelz - what I think of as "The Reasonable Camp" - that's who I cut my teeth with and certainly the way I prefer to approach things in general.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yes, ditto; I think what I wrote in my reply above may have suggested it was your opinion, not a hypothetical likely response -- I didn't mean it that way.

I hope we don't get one of the cases in question, but I think it worthwhile to consider the consequences.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

But what if I'd given the hypothetical case as

Spokane 400
Orlando 300
Helsinki 300

Spokane wins in this situation when Orlando-Helsinki are eliminated. Are we really supposed to say "But US Worldcons are Special?"

The last I noticed, it was pretty difficult for someone from Helsinki to drive to Spokane, or even Orlando.

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

I suspect the sheer numbers question is what finally makes most people complain. Lots more vocal US fans than Scandinavian ones - which means lots more complaints when a double elim hits US cities.

Doesn't make it right - just makes it more likely.