Hugo Weekend

I haven't said much here today because I've been busy chasing Hugo Award coverage, including doing my part with maintenance of the Hugo Awards web site. The live announcement of the results yesterday afternoon went very well, and I am really happy with the interest in them. This seems to be a pretty strong ballot, and the new record number of ballots cast is a good sign too. I am also happy to see far fewer initial kvetches than I expected. I was prepared for a bunch of complaints along the lines of "this proves the awards are too populist," possibly from the same people who complained that there were too few voters to be representative in the past.

We've been saying for some time now that the first step toward increasing the turnout on the Hugo Awards is to get the people who are already eligible to vote. This year may have seen a small step in that direction. We could still do much better. There are more than 5000 people eligible to vote, so while 864 is good, there's a ways to go, and we'll keep it up.

I hope that this year's live Hugo Announcement Ceremony is something that future Worldcons decide to repeat, including cooperating with line online coverage so that fans from around the world can participate in the excitement.

Heading South

Lisa and I initially had some errands to run in Seattle today when I first booked this trip, and therefore I booked the latest possible flight back to Oakland. However, by the time we got here, the reasons for the errands evaporated, so after checking out of the room and having breakfast, we decided that Lisa would go ahead and leave and I'd try to get over to Sea-Tac and catch an earlier flight.

I'd had a small crisis from work come up this morning which used an hour of my time to resolve, and that proved to be a deal-breaker for getting me on the 1:35 flight out of Sea-Tac. Had I not spent that hour in the hotel lobby working on databases, I would have been able to get to the airport in time to get on the flight. As it was, I might have been able to make the flight, but my luggage would not, and that would have been pointless. So I'm currently standing by for a seat on the 5:35 flight, with a confirmed seat on the 7:55. If I get a seat on the 5:35 and if it is on time, there's a small chance I might be able to take the Capitol home from Oakland, rather than BART + taxi, the latter of which costs more total. (BART fare is cheaper than the train, but the $12 taxi fare from the BART station wipes out the savings.)

Meanwhile, Sea-Tac has made their wi-fi free, which makes the four hour wait here at the airport much more bearable. I've sat here this afternoon getting caught up on as many things as I can. Now I can have some lunch and head down toward the D gates to hang out waiting to see if I make the earlier flight.

Match Game SF was fun, but I'm disappointed with myself for not having proactively arranged for a table for Westercon 64. Lisa and I did take over an unused table on Sunday to allow here and travelswithkuma to promote the Tonopah Westercon bid. It's all too true that unless I have a specific task to accomplish like the game show or the Hugo Announcement, I don't have much to do at conventions these days, and sitting behind a table talking about some project or another is probably the best place for me.