Chicon 7 Day 4: Hugo Night

After the WSFS Business Meeting was over, I checked with Program Ops to confirm that we still had the 10:30 Monday slot for Business Meeting so we could use it for the MPC Meeting instead. I sent a notice to the newsletter about the Monday MPC meeting. I also scratched myself from my 3 PM panel on the Worldcon Heritage Project because I needed food and sleep.

( Missed Another Art Show )

About 6:30 PM or so, I made my way down to the ballroom, set down next to Mike Glyer at a spare table, and set up my computer. Good thing, too, as its connection to the conference center wi-fi had expired and I had to go hunt up a copy of issue 1 of the Newsletter to restart it. I checked in with the door guards. Gary Feldbaum let me go on in, where I found my reserved seat in front of the Tech Nest. There I gingerly plugged in my 4-plug extension to one of the Tech Team's power strips and set up my computer.

( Covering the Hugos )

UStream failures notwithstanding, the Hugo Awards Ceremony itself was just fine. It went off smoothly, there were no obvious technical glitches, it lasted about the right amount of time, and everyone seem pleased. I'm generally happy with our CIL coverage as well. Cheryl kept things moving in the background, Mur gave descriptions of what was going on, and I posted the nominees and results as they happened. After the Awards ended, I left the room and started to set up to try and post the results on the Hugo Awards web site. (Unlike last year, I did not receive an embargoed copy of the results and thus was not able to do anything in advance.)

( Medical Interruption )

I didn't go to any parties tonight. I spent all of my time after I got back to the room posting the Hugo Results, and posting the Business Meeting videos that I'd uploaded earlier in the day.

( What About Lisa? )

Alas for not being able to sleep in on Monday, but at least we don't have to check out until Tuesday.

Chicon 7 Day 5: Keep On SMOFing

I had to be up for another 10:30 AM meeting in Columbus CD, but this time it was the WSFS Mark Protection Committee Meeting, which met in what would have been the fourth WSFS Business Meeting had the BM had to use the "overflow" slot. (There hasn't been an "overflow" meeting since 1992, but we keep it in the schedule just in case.) I left Lisa sleeping in the room since she needed it and the MPC meeting doesn't need to be recorded (although it's open to the membership, and since there was a WSFS Business Meeting on the schedule, some people did wander in for a while to see what was going on).

I was re-elected WSFS Mark Protection Committee chairman for the coming year. The Hugo Awards Marketing Committee was renewed, and Dave McCarty will take over as chairman there. The Worldcon Website Working Group was renewed and Mike Scott (drplokta) will continue as Chairman there. I have told everyone who has come to me with suggestions about fixing the WSFS web site and the domain registrations to talk to Mike Scott and Don Eastlake. Mike and Don have the full authorization to work on behalf of WSFS to clean up the domains and to rebuild the web site. There is no question of that. They'll work on this and come back to the Mark Protection Committee if they are unable to get the domain that is "stuck" with a non-responsive admin/registrant contact pried loose.

Much later that evening, at the Former Worldcon Chairs Party, we actually were able to convene the entire membership of the CanSMOF board of directors (Anticipation's parent corporation) for the first time in quite a while. The Board held a meeting and granted CA$5000 to Nippon 2007 toward repayment of their deficit and also voted to offer to act as a clearinghouse for donations of Canadian funds toward the Nippon 2007 deficit retirement effort.

There were other, smaller SMOFfing sessions around the convention about which there's no need to write more here until something comes of them. It's hard for me to move about a Worldcon without some sort of discussion of fannish politics breaking out, even if I don't initiate them.