2014 WSFS Main Business Meeting Results and Videos

There were seven constitutional amendments passed on from last year's Worldcon. All seven were ratified, all unanimously or by an uncounted show of hands except for "A Matter of Trust" (removing the requirement that Worldcons default to sending paper publications for members), which was ratified on a 53-26 counted vote by the "serpentine" method. All of these amendments take effect at the conclusion of this year's Worldcon and first affect next year's Worldcon.

This it was on to New Business, where six proposals had made it from the Preliminary Business Meeting. Four of them passed, two of them in different forms than they were originally proposed.

( List of Proposals and Results )

The four items that got first passage this year will be submitted to next year's Worldcon for ratification. Anything ratified there, including the revised version of Popular Ratification, will take effect at the end of the 2015 Worldcon, first affecting the 2016 Worldcon. In other words, if Popular Ratification gets through the 2015 Business Meeting, anything first passed at the 2016 WSFS BM will have to be first ratified by the 2017 WSFS BM and then approved by a referendum of the 2018 Worldcon's members.

Here are the three videos that make up the 2014 WSFS Main Business Meeting held on Saturday morning of the 2014 Worldcon, Loncon 3.

( Embedded Videos Behind the Cut )

Note: It's many hours after these videos go up that I have time to format them into entries like this. If you want to know things a little faster (not that there's much more news to report), follow my Twitter Feed (@KevinStandlee). To see the Business Meeting videos as they post (as opposed to when I announce them here), follow my YouTube channel.

Worldcon Day 4: Emergency Holographic Secretary

[Backdated entry because I was much too busy on Sunday to write anything.]

As Lisa and I trudged toward the ExCel on Sunday morning to get set up for the third and final WSFS Business Meeting, I got a call from Linda Deneroff, the Secretary. Her roommate had fallen and badly cut her head, and they were off to hospital to get her stitched. Could I please help with the Business Meeting? Good thing I was carrying my computer with me.

( Activate the Emergency Holographic Secretary )

Fortunately, Sunday's business was pro-forma. The only really substantive business was the formal announcement of 2016 Worldcon Site Selection. The key figures were Kansas City 651, Beijing 70. (With scatterings of votes for oddball write-ins and none of the above.) The original is a PDF that I'm not going to retype right now.

Kansas City announced MidAmeriCon II and their guests with an initial video. I'm glad that I'd figured out on the first day's meeting what the preset buttons on the room lighting controls did; it made it easy to lower the lights to appropriate level for the presentations.

( Grousing About Question Time )

After the Business Meeting adjourned sine die (a Latin phrase meaning "See you next year", as I put it for the con newsletter), I asked the folks in the room to quickly reset the head platform for the Worldcon Chairs photo shoot by moving the tables away and putting chairs for the Chairs. With relatively little mess (partially because people are starting to get used to the drill), we got things reset, Lisa shot the video of everyone giving their names and conventions, and people got a chance to take photos. Lisa has lots of photos, and they're on my computer now as well, but I've not had time to upload them, so that's why they're not there.

Lisa took the camera gear and returned to the hotel, as she wasn't needed at (nor did she want to attend) the Mark Protection Committee meeting.

( MPC Mini-Report )

After dealing with some policy issues that needed straightening out and mapping out the general course of action for the coming year, the MPC adjourned and I had most of the rest of the afternoon to myself prior to needing to get ready for the Hugo Awards ceremony.

Worldcon Day 4: Genius!

[Backdated entry because I was much too busy on Sunday to write anything.]

Sunday afternoon of Loncon 3 had an amazing hole open up in my schedule after the conclusion of WSFS Business (Business Meeting, Worldcon Chairs, MPC Meeting) that coincided with the performance of Girl Genius Radio Theatre in the "Second Stage" (a large theatre-style stage area, smaller than the main auditorium, but still big). The previous day, Phil had told me when I asked that I could turn up, and when I did so, he assigned me the title-character role in Deathwish DuPree and the The Return of Deathwish DuPree.

DuPree, the brother of the character in the canonical series, was to be portrayed as an Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling pirate. I attempted to buckle my swashes, but also to do things like drop out of the character's accent into what appeared to be asides in the script. (Phil later said that was good.) The audience seemed to laugh when I did so, as well, so I think it must have worked.

I had a fabulous time, and was utterly delighted to be able to have this much fun after the amount of work I'd done the previous three days of the convention. I'm so grateful to Phil and Kaja for letting me come be silly on stage with them again like this.

( No GGRT pix; I was busy acting! )

Soon enough fun and games were over. I'd had a late lunch and then an early dinner, both at the Indian restaurant on the main concourse. I coordinated plans with Cheryl Morgan for our Hugo Award coverage later that day and returned to the hotel for a short rest before things got busy again. But I had a bounce in my step from having been able to actually enjoy myself for a while rather than concentrate only on official business.