Unofficial 2017 Worldcon Site Selection Results

I was one of Montreal's team members counting ballots for the 2017 Worldcon Site Selection. Once the results were determined, there was an agreement that the results would be embargoed until 23:15 PDT to allow the bids to talk with their own teams. About 45 minutes after that, I tweeted the summary results, and my phone went crazy with retweets.

Helsinki wins the 2017 Worldcon outright on the first ballot, polling 52% of first-preference votes with a near-record turnout.

( More details )

Technically, these results are unofficial until received by the Site Selection Business Meeting on Sunday morning. There is no dispute about the results, however, so the receipt of the results should be a formality. However, inasmuch as both I and jared_dashoff are part of 2017 bids, we'll both recuse ourselves from presiding over that part of the meeting in favor of Donald Eastlake III, the Business Meeting Parliamentarian.

WSFS Business: Site Selection Business Meeting Summary

Today's Business Meeting was the Site Selection Meeting, which means the first thing to do was to officially receive the site selection results. The unofficial results were confirmed and made official, and Helsinki is officially Worldcon 75.

The Business Meeting moved to dispense with Question Time for next year's Worldcon, and the two 2018 bids declined to make the presentations for which they were allocated programming time. This allowed us to actually get to work on some constitutional amendments. We had only two hours today because of the adjournment to have the Former Worldcon Chairs' Photo Session. Once again, you'll need to refer to the Sasquan WSFS Business Meeting agenda pages to follow this.

( At last, we get some business done! )

That dealt with the required business regarding Site Selection and ratification of constitutional amendments. Now we could finally get to the New Business, barely.

( Yes, we really did end up debating the motion to Adjourn )

There are still six constitutional amendments pending for Sunday. I have a feeling the current order in which we're planning to take them up will get wiped out, and I can't tell you exactly in what order we'll consider them. You'll have to watch for more YouTube videos.

I did let my temper get away from me after adjournment yesterday, snapping at people who were metaphorically "jiggling my elbow" while we were rushing to turn the room into the Worldcon Chairs Photo and back to a program room with very little time to do the work. I'm sorry about that. It is apparently not always obvious that just because the formal meeting is adjourned, my work hasn't finished: it's just begun.

Worldcon Day 4: Site Selection to the Hugo Awards

We got the Site Selection Business Meeting done. Lisa managed to get the Worldcon Chairs Photo Session recorded on video and in still photos, but we've not had enough time to post them.

After the meeting, Lisa and I got lunch at Hill's Restaurant again, and had another nice talk with the owner.

We went back to the convention center, and Lisa and I went separate ways because I had to go over to the Historic Davenport (for the first time since the night before the convention) for a meeting of the CanSMOF (Montreal Worldcon) non-profit corporation.

( Poutine a la Spokane: Extra Smoky Flavour )

The buses between the convention center and the Historic Davenport were very convenient. There was one at the curb as I came out of the hotel, so I hopped on and rode back to the Doubletree. I then spent the next couple of hours formatting Hugo Award announcements and preparing for Saturday night's Hugo Awards Ceremony.

( Now it can be told: The Hugo Awards web site Easter Egg )

The ceremony coverage went very well. I was thrown for a loop by not picking up a copy of the ceremony program in advance, so I didn't realize that they were taking up the categories in a non-traditional order.

As you may have heard by now, No Award won in five of the sixteen categories, principally the ones that were exclusively dominated by the so-called "puppy" candidates. The votes weren't even close. It would appear that most of the people voting this year didn't care for a lot of of this year's finalists.

After the ceremony I was booked to appear on the post-ceremony show, but by the time I got over to the show, they were off the air. The Ceremony lasted longer than planned, and that cut the post-show coverage short due to time constraints on the Convention Center facilities.

I sat down at a table and got the Hugo Awards results online. Unfortunately, because I rushed, I originally posted the 2015 results under the title 2014, and that affected the URL for the announcement. I can't really change it because it's already been widely distributed, although I did fix the title when I got back to the hotel room and signed back in, by which time there were several people who had pointed out the mistake.

That's a fair day's work. But we have one more day of Worldcon to go, including a still-crowded WSFS Business Meeting agenda.