Westercon, Day 3: Light Schedule

[kevin_standlee]

Today is my lightest schedule of the four days. The (generally pro forma) site selection business meeting is at Noon, and I have a panel at at 3 PM that I'm moderating on "Great Convention Mistakes!" Also, there is a gathering of those of us working on Nippon2007 from 2 to 4, which of course conflicts with the panel, but I can go to the first hour of the meeting, then to my panel. After that, I'm clear for the rest of the day, and there are no plans for us to go off site and sightsee like yesterday.

We do have to repack the Match Game material from the box in which it sits into my rolling luggage, because otherwise it would be too heavy and unwieldy to move down to the Pavilion tomorrow morning. However, this should not take long or be too difficult.

Westercon does not require a Site Selection Business Meeting. There are people (Kent Bloom being among the most vocal) who don't want such meetings even to be scheduled, since they're only needed if there is some irregularity or low-probability event like a tie or None of the Above winning. I much prefer that we schedule and hold such a meeting, even though it normally consists of formally congratulating the winning bid and letting them make their first formal presentation as a seated Westercon. This is because:

1. In case there ever is such an irregularity -- and as Ben Yalow can tell you, there have been such in the past -- why create a crisis trying to tell every member of the convention that there will be a special unscheduled meeting the next morning.

(And to those who say "Why should we tell every member? We just need to tell those people who care about it, such as my friends," I say, "Bunk! The fact that most members decline to participate does not mean they should not have equal opportunity to do so.")

2. I think formality is good at certain times, including this opportunity for a Westercon to take its first formal steps as an organization.

I know, I know, some of you think all this formality is silly and we should just Do What You Say, but I'm funny that way. That's why some people think I like formality for its own sake or that I'm hopelessly tied up in rules with no concern for that the purpose of those rules are. My position is more complicated than that, but it's hard to explain to people who expect everything to be black or white.

Comments

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

Formality at its best is simply good manners. It's usually only bad when used as a bludgeon.

It's always better, Mr. Standlee, to be slightly too formal than to offend someone by overlooking them (like those who would be interested in a site selection meeting only, or primarily, when it's contested). In my humble opinion, at least.

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

The simple way of resolving the problem would be to hold the site selection meeting, but to let people know through word of mouth that the meeting itself is a formality and that attendance is not normally required except for meeting officers and bidders. Ways to accomplish this are a one-line agenda and a two-minute meeting. Worst case when you do this is people are a few minutes late going to a panel.

I am a big fan of short meetings.

What do you mean about Westercon taking its "first formal steps as an organization"? Hasn't it been around since, like, Truman was president?

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

I am thinking a scary thought as a first time Worldcon attendee and that is staffing or voluteering at a Worldcon. Nippon 2007 is looking like a possibility with sacrifices to other cons I usually attend. If you can put an report about that meeting Kevin, it would be appreciated.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I don't mean Westercon, the annual convention, which has approximately the same level of year-to-year continuity as a Worldcon. (Westercon is vaguely more continuous because LASFS holds the service mark, but it's not much of a difference in practice.) I said "a Westercon" and I meant Westercon 61, the 2008 West Coast Science Fantasy Convention. Until the meeting, Westercon 61 didn't formally exist. After the meeting, it did.

As far as the word of mouth thing goes, we already do that; however, some people do come to the meeting so see the formal announcement.

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

And if I hadn't been involved in setting up for the Fannish Iron Chef even (or as WJW termed it "Iron Chef: Conzilla!") I would have been at the formal site selection meeting. Not only is it a courtesy to the newly elected Westercon, its a case of "Better to have and not need than to need and not have."

[nitroace.livejournal.com]

I think scheduling a formal meeting is good. Suppose someone wanted to contest the election. They would automatically know that they had recourse the next day to bring up whatever point they wanted. Maybe that someone wouldn't know the first thing about "calling" for a meeting that wasn't scheduled, but at least could look in their program and notice that there already is one that they can go do and make their grievance known. I also like the formal announcement and ability to congratulate the winner and thank the loser for their well-run competition. All very civil and proper and makes positive feelings all around. If done right.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I agree with all of your points. As it happens, there was a highly-technical irregularity with this year's election that might have been grounds for complaint. Neither of the bids was concerned about it, but had even one member raised it as an objection, the BM would have had to take some sort of official notice and maybe even reopen the election, and since the results had already been made known, this would have created a huge kerflufle. (This is one of the few good reasons I've heard for embargoing the results until the next day's meeting; however, it's effectively impossible to maintain the embargo without locking the bidders in a room all night -- something we actually did in 1991 for Worldcon, but for a different reason.) As nobody objected, no official notice had to be taken of the irregularity (site selection had not been open enough hours on the last day of the election).

There's one other reason for scheduling that meeting -- if you don't, then you have to keep site selection voting open through the next-to-last day of the election, rather than only going two days as we did this year. As the bidders were content to have only two days of balloting, it was easier for everyone if we just did things the way we did.

[sfrose.livejournal.com]

(site selection had not been open enough hours on the last day of the election).

Sigh. I forgot about that...

We would have been open on Sunday from noon to 6, but the problem of having Site-selection administrators and staff also Business Meeting junkies meant that there wasn't anyone who wanted to give up the Business Meeting to keep the site-selection hours open.

As it was we extended the closing hours until 6:30 (with a voter pushing the last couple of minutes) and opened ~10 minutes earlier than 2pm, so we were open for 4 hours, 40 minutes instead of six.

I'm now also wondering whether recent past Westercons managed that 6 hour rule since it's been years since there were evening voting hours on the last voting day.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I haven't been paying that close attention, but the last time I did take note, the way it worked was that Site Selection had managed to find at least one person willing to sit at the table during the Business Meeting; also, I think some have stayed open until 7 PM rather than 6:30. Another thing that might have been done (I can't remember if it's what they actually did) was to split hours and be open 10-Noon and 2-6 or something like that.

It's also possible that we've been committing technical bylaw violations for a while now and nobody noticed. That wouldn't surprise me a bit, as a lot of rules get ignored unless someone calls attention to them.

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

I'm a little late to this thread. I have two comments:

1) we had ~32% voter turn out for this election, which I think is pretty high these days. San Diego in 2006 was decided with only 147 ballots cast out of ~800 members, or only 18.4%

2) this race was much closer than usual, and its not outside the realm of possibility to have gone to the Business Meeting (unlikely, but possible). I prefer to have the site selection meeting scheduled, if only to give the winning bid their day of sunshine and to give them an extra day for conversions. I'm funny that way.