WSFS Work Day

[kevin_standlee]

I'm glad I didn't have anything planned for today other than having breakfast at the Wigwam (won $22 after my $17 breakfast, hooray), because as it happens I had work to do on all three of the departments in the WSFS division for Worldcon 76.

• I did work looking over the layout for the space we currently are booked to use for the WSFS Business Meeting. The room is actually quite a bit larger than what we usually need; however, Programming doesn't see much need for using that particular space from 1000-1300, which is the usual hours of the Business Meeting, so they suggested putting us in this large room. We of course have to get out of there on time to allow the "Second Stage" (large Programming/small Events) functions to do their thing.



• The Hugo Awards Voter Packet went out earlier this week, but there have been some technical problems, with some people not being able to access it. Ron Oakes was working on that part, but I was answering e-mails from people about it to explain what was going on. In addition, when a workaround posted on the Worldcon 76 web site, I switched hats to the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee and Tweeted the workaround. Also, there are people who don't read the Worldcon 76 or Hugo Awards web sites, don't follow either group's Twitter or Facebook, don't follow any of the usual SF/F news sources like Locus or File 770, and hadn't yet heard that the packet is out, and were wondering why not. For them, I pointed them at the announcement on the Worldcon 76 web site and explained that we hadn't sent out an all-members e-mail until we got the bugs in the site worked out.



• And then there is Site Selection. The Worldcon 2020 and NASFiC 2019 site selection ballots were actually published a few weeks ago, but only in the paper form going to those members who requested paper mailings, as part of Progress Report 3. This was sort of a "soft release" for the "voter token" method that people can use to pay their Advance Supporting Membership (Voting) fees for the two elections. This is particularly important for people who cannot pay by USD check or money order — like everyone outside of the USA! A handful of people have followed the instructions on the paper ballots (you buy a voting token for the correct election through the Worldcon 76 registration site, then supply that token number on your ballot), so we'll shortly be publishing the PDFs of the ballots and explaining how to vote electronically. It's not going to be the same as Hugo Voting, and can't be due to need for the ASM payments and due to a significantly different voting model, but we expect to be the first Worldcon to offer any form of electronic site selection voting. This is relatively easy because both of the elections we're administering are uncontested, so there's been no worries from the bids regarding the systems we're trialing. (As we know, being unopposed doesn't guarantee a win, but it does reduce the stress quite a bit.)

As I said, I'm glad I had the day available, because I needed it. And Lisa helped as well, by acting as a sounding board for some of the material I was writing. Also, she's building an online model of the Business Meeting room in the ActiveWorlds environment, so people can walk around the room and get an idea of how the plans translate into 3D. If you're interested, sign up for an account on AW (free) and contact me for the address within AW where the virtual meeting room is built.