How to Bid for a Westercon

[kevin_standlee]

On Sunday I was contacted by someone on behalf of a group of people interested in bidding to host Westercon. The would-be bidders had read the Westercon Bylaws and knew that there were documents they needed to file in order to bid, but they could not figure out where to file them. This puzzled me initially, because I pretty much take it for granted that anyone bidding for Westercon has attended a few of them and been involved in their politics, but upon looking at the Bylaws, I guess I can see how someone could be confused about where you file. It's not like the Bylaws have explicit language that says, "To bid for Westercon, fill out this checklist and send it to this fixed address."

Because the election is administered by the Westercon two years before the target year, the address to which you submit your bid changes every year. This year being 2015, the election is for 2017, and would-be bidders file with the 2015 Westercon in San Diego. If you want to bid for 2018, you file your papers with the 2016 Westercon in Portland. There's no single fixed address, no online form on a single web site, and no single point of contact, and this apparently is confusing to people coming to Westercon out of the blue. Worldcon is the same way, which is presumably why sometimes the Worldcon web site gets e-mail from groups who want to know how they can persuade the WSFS Board of Directors to award a Worldcon to their city.

Anyway, in light of the request for clarification, I wrote an article for the Westercon web site entitled How to Bid for a Westercon. I hope it helps. I'm so close to the process that I clearly cannot see what things newcommers cannot see, so I'm likely to not be fully explaining everything you have to do.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The map is relevant. Mentioning Canada and Mexico are relevant, and you did that well. It's mentioning eastern Colorado - where Denver is not - that isn't relevant.

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

How relevant knowing parts of eastern New Mexico and Colorado are east of the boundary (the New Mexico/Texas border is a fair ways east of 104 degrees west longitude) depends on how likely we are to see someone thinking that Tucumcari New Mexico, Fort Morgan Colorado, or La Junta Colorado (to pick on three not tiny towns that are in New Mexico or Colorado but lie east of 104 degrees west) is going to want to bid.

Since we've seen only a handful of bids or Westercons in cities near the eastern boundary (Denver, Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, El Paso, and possibly Cheyenne, Laramie, Regina, and Saskatoon are probably the only cities that would be practical for a Westercon of its current 500-800 member size), it probably isn't that relevant. But I don't know if we should require people to be familiar with the boundaries to realize that only parts of two states are excluded, and part of another state and a province are included. (I think people are likely to think of Texas and Saskatchewan as not being "west").

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see. I didn't actually mention eastern Colorado, but you were giving it as an example of a level of unnecessary detail. I thought you were talking about something I'd actually mentioned.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You did mention eastern Colorado.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Where? The word "Colorado" was never in the article. I went back and checked the change log on the article to be sure.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"Here’s a map of the Westercon Region. It starts from 104° West Latitude in the east (a smidge between New Mexico’s eastern border and Wyoming’s eastern border, chopping off the east-most portion of Colorado), covers North America westward and includes Hawaii."

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, that! The region map has been on the web site for several years now and has had that text all along. I thought you were talking about the main article about how to bid. I've dropped the reference to Eastern Colorado. The part about where 104° west is located is so people have some idea of where the eastern boundary is.