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]

Suggestions:

1) "Regional restrictions" should go with "What locations are eligible" because it affects what locations are eligible. And either say what the fourth region is or don't mention it; this is a general guide and not a full explanation.

2) Don't obsess over the details of the map. "Sites in Mexico are eligible" is enough about that point. Who cares about the easternmost slice of Colorado? If it doesn't include the Denver area, it's irrelevant to any actual Westercon bid, and anyone who really cared could look up where the meridian goes.

3) Give examples of two years prior as where to send the bid, as you do in this post.

4) It might be wise to specify that "letter of intent or option" is not a contract, because of course you can't sign a contract when bidding because you haven't won the bid yet. That may seem obvious, but you've already proven that the obvious may need to be specified.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

1) If I don't mention region 4 (sites not otherwise defined, which would only include Australia, and the conditions for Australia being eligible haven't happened are never will IMO), I'll get jumped on by the handful of Westercon rules-geeks. I'll move it to a footnote.

2) Denver is actually eligible, so the map is relevant. I mention Canada and Mexico because there are people who don't know this and think Westercon is a US convention, or that only Canada and the USA are eligible. Yes, I know better, and so do you. It's surprising how many things people assume to be true, like the people who assumed that the Worldcon rules required every other Worldcon to be held outside of the USA because we had a run of US/Not-US sites in the 2000s.

3) I already included an example, but I'll expand it and include a second one.

4) Explaining what a letter of intent or option is may help. I'll try.

[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.

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

I just had this evil thought of showing up at the Westercon business meeting and proposing to amend the bylaws to remove the reference to 104° west and replace it with "Saskatchewan, Montana, Wyoming , Colorado, New Mexico, Parrts of Texas and Mexico due south of New Mexico, and any islands and territories of Canada, The United States, or Mexico west of the specified region and within the Western Hemisphere."

If nothing else, it would liven up the meeting.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

As far as thirty seconds of map gazing reveals, one could theoretically bid for Midway Island or American Samoa. As on the canonically valid Aleutian Islands, finding a suitable venue would be problematic. American Samoa does have the village of Tafuna, population 8,209 and alleged to be "the center of nightlife on the island," not to mention being conveniently located next to Pago Pago International Airport.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Actually, neither Midway nor American Samoa is eligible. The actual technical rule is:

Any site on the North American continent west of the 104th west meridian, or in the state of Hawaii,...

Neither Midway nor American Samoa is geographically part of North America. While Midway is geographically part of the Hawaiian Islands chain, it is not legally part of the state of Hawaii.

[rogers cadenhead (from livejournal.com)]

The Hugo Awards site is telling people the vote isn't open yet:

http://www.thehugoawards.org/i-want-to-vote/

"Voting for the 2015 Hugo Awards final ballot is not yet open. We will announce when the 2015 Worldcon opens voting on the final ballot."

Thought I'd post a heads up here. If you'd prefer email, let me know.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I was going to point out their status as American territories but decided I was putting too much thought into it anyway. *grin*

Is there a rule for what offshore islands are considered North America and which aren't, for Westercon purposes?

[akawil]

I think that would exclude the Canadian territories and most of Alaska (anything that's north of the northern border of Saskatchewan, i.e. the 60th parallel). Your list needs to include the Northwest Territories, and possibly parts of Nunavut due north of the Northwest Territories.

[akawil]

What's the legislative history of that "if the U.S. annexes Australia" clause? I'm sure that particular debate was ... very fannish.

(And how did they leave out a "if Canada or Mexico annexes Australia" clause?)

Also, for whoever runs westercon.org, the links to the "past papers" (bylaws and minutes) from 2010 and earlier seem to be broken.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I'm the person who mostly runs the Westercon web site. (There are others who can do so as well.) I think I see why all those links broke when we migrated servers a while back, but inasmuch as I'm leaving for San Diego in a few hours, I don't have time to fix it now. You're the first person to point it out since we moved servers. Thanks.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The US/Australia thing is the result of the 1998 Westercon Business Meeting. Terry Frost was the Down Under Fan Fund delegate that year, and he was doing an extended tour that included Westercon. Because he was hanging around with me and cherylmmorgan, he ended up going to the Westercon Business Meeting. Just for laughs, he proposed adding Australia to the list of places where you could hold Westercon. The BM attendees, being whimsical at times, thought it was a good idea and started to adopt it. Ben Yalow, who was trying to be the Adult in the room, persuaded the members to include the "only if annexed" clause, which of course took all of the teeth out of it. The toothless provision was duly ratified.

A few years later, at a Westercon in Seattle, a member decided that Fun is Fun but Enough is Enough and moved to strike the Australia clause. To his dismay, other members voted to amend his proposal in such a way as to leave the Australia clause in place but take out the annexation clause. The net result was that the amended proposal (which would have roped Australia into the valid locations that could hold Westercon failed, leaving us with the current state of affairs. We thus have a provision that is never going to happen in practice, but that we also can't remove because the Business Meeting regulars will get silly.

In a sense, this is probably Australian fandom's payback for how the DUFF delegate the other direction, Jerry Kaufman, attended the Australian National SF Convention business meeting and presented a bid to hold the 1985 NatCon is Seattle. It won, there being at that time no provision to limit the Australian NatCon to Australia. In the end, the 1985 NatCon that most people attended was in Adelaide, the intervening NatCon having effectively invalidated the Seattle selection; however, as I understand it, Jerry held a panel at the 1985 Norwescon and declared it to be the 1985 Australian National Science Fiction Convention, SpawnCon.

And people say SMOFS have no sense of humor!

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I was going to point out their status as American territories...

Yes, but they're not part of North America. If Hawaii wasn't explicitly included, it wouldn't be part of Westercon either.

Is there a rule for what offshore islands are considered North America and which aren't, for Westercon purposes?

No, there isn't. "North America" is a geographical distinction, not a political one. The sensible interpretation (and the one I'd make if it ever came up, which it could) is any islands that are parts of US or Mexican states or Canadian provinces associated with the North American continent. The reason this could come up is that it's not impossible that someone might bid Victoria BC, that being in my opinion the only city of any decent size that's on a North American island on the west coast.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That shows why the existing definition is simpler, except for people who insist on trying to find hidden meanings in everything.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Fixed now. I'm surprised nobody pointed it out sooner.

[akawil]

Nanaimo's slightly larger than Victoria actually, but given that it's also on Vancouver Island it's the same question.

Is a Catalina bid completely out of the question? I don't have a sense of how much hotel space it has.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I thought Victoria had more convention facilities, but I might be mistaken.

I'd be very surprised at a Catalina Island bid. I'm not familiar with its hospitality space. Mind you, I helped with the Tonopah Westercon bid, and Tonopah isn't very big. OTOH, it does have a convention center and certainly would have had enough hotel space for the number of people who would have attended.

[akawil]

Speaking of Alaska, has anyone ever bid for a Westercon in Anchorage? It seems like a plausible site, but Google doesn't show anything relevant.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Mexico would also be plausible...but apparently never actually done.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

There has never been a serious bid for a site in Alaska.

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

Having bid For a site in Australia, I take umbrage at item 1), above ;-)

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

There was a proposal to move the eastern limit to the Mississippi River but it morphed into the current three/four zone scheme. (Bugs Bunny voice: ain't I a stinker?)

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

Well, technically...

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

Avalon, Catalina Island does indeed have enough facilities, but I'm beyond bidding Westercons now.

[delosharriman]

You can easily find the continental shelf boundary on a good map. The distinction is quite well demarcated, most everywhere below the Arctic Circle.