2017 WSFS Business Meeting: Preliminary Business Meeting

Here's a relatively quick summary of what happened at today's Preliminary Business Meeting. You'll need to refer to the 2017 WSFS Business Meeting Agenda to understand what's happening.

Standing Rule Changes:

A.1. No Candidate Regions: PASSED, takes effect immediately
A.2. No Vanishing Business: REFERRED TO COMMITTEE to report tomorrow due to a dispute over wording
A.3. Debate Time Streamlining: PASSED, takes effect immediately (and thank goodness it passed, because we never would have been able to complete the base agenda otherwise)
A.4. Electronic Documents are a Thing: REJECTED
A.5. Butt Out (officially bans smoking): PASSED

Note that "smoking" is undefined. Whether it includes e-cigarettes would be up to the individual meeting. However, in practice, all facilities prohibit smoking anyway. This rule would only apply in the unlikely event that the venue permitted it.

Resolutions:

B.1. Eligibility: your name: PASSED, extending the work's Hugo Eligibility for one year
B.2. Hugo Award Study Committee: Alternative version B.2.1. PASSED. Vincent Docherty to chair.
B.3. Provision of Convention Publications to Members: Alternative version B.3.1 PASSED.

Constitutional Amendments and Business Passed On
This is mostly setting debate time limits.

C.1. Best Series. Debate Time 10 min. Amendment C.1.1 Debate time 4 min in addition to the 10 min
C.2. December is Good Enough: Debate time 8 min.
C.3. Two Years is Enough: Debate time 8 min.
C.4. Three Stage Voting (3SV): Debate time 20 min.
C.5. Motion to Suspend E Pluribus Hugo for one year: Debate time 10 min. POSTPONED to Saturday.
C.6. EPH+. Debate time 20 min. (Amendment C.6.1 debate time 5 min allocated from the 20 min.)
C.7. Defining North America. Debate time 4 min.
C.8. Retrospective Improvement Pt. 1. Debate time 8 min.
C.9. Retrospective Improvement Pt. 2. Debate time 8 min.
C.10. Universal Suffrage. Debate time 8 min.
C.11. Young Adult Award. Debate time 20 min. Amendment C.11.1 Clean up amendment. Debate time 4 min in addition to the 20 min.
C.12. Motion to suspend 5 and 6 for one year. Debate time 10 min. POSTPONED to Saturday.

New Constitutional Amendments

D.1. What Our Marks Really Are. Debate time 4 min.
D.2. The Reasonable Amendment. Debate time 4 min.
D.3. Make Room! Make Room! Debate time 6 min.
D.4. Name That Award (Naming the YA Award). Debate time 16 min. SCHEDULED to come up after C.11 and only if C.11 ratified, with the assumption that nominations for the name will come up then, with voting on the proposals the next day.
D.5. Requiring Electronic Payments. KILLED by postpone indefinitely.
D.6/D.7/D.8 (Hugo Category Change proposals). REFERRED to Hugo Award Study Committee. HASC to report to Friday meeting with a recommendation. Expect HASC to recommend that the proposals all be sent back to HASC for further study.

No Committee Reports were received. We ran completely out of time. Nominations were received for the WSFS Mark Protection Committee; election for the 3 positions (4 candidates) will be at the start of the Friday meeting. Committee reports are included in the agenda.

Worldcon 75 Day 2: Giving Myself the Business (Meeting)

Day 2 included the first (preliminary) WSFS Business Meeting, which meant a lot of work and stress for both Lisa and me. But fortunately, the worst case scenarios did not come to pass, and we (barely) managed to complete the business we had to get done, although not everything that we would have preferred to get done.

Our biggest fear going in to today's meeting was that we would have more people wanting to attend than the room capacity of 240 seats. Unlike every other item at this convention, where you can turn people way, the WSFS Business Meeting cannot refuse admission to any attending member who wants to attend. Had we overflowed the room, a contingency plan with Programming would have been activated that would have allowed every member who wished to participate a chance to do so, but would have been massively disruptive and expensive. I think we were very fortunate that only around 100 people attended, so there was plenty of room. I fielded a complaint from someone griping that we were using a room that was too big for such a small turnout, and when I tried to explain that we have to try to use rooms that are "too large" due to not being able to turn people way, he just looked sort of blankly at me. Most people just don't get that the WSFS BM is really the only required program item at the entire convention, and that every member is guaranteed attendance, and that you can never really tell how many people are going to show up.

I don't know the exact attendance count. The total of the one counted vote we did won't tell you that, because not everyone votes on such things, and calling for abstentions is meaningless. (Because people who don't answer when you call for abstentions have abstained just as much as those who do answer.) I'm pretty sure it was more than 100 but less than 150. We'll know later when the sign-in sheets are tallied.

( Business Meeting Team )

As has been our practice since 2015, we started by showing the WSFS Business Meeting Basics video. But before I called the meeting to order, Lisa wanted to make an announcement and presentation.

( Springing a Surprise on the Chairman )

I was very surprised and flattered at the gift and the applause from the meeting.

I wrote earlier today about a summary of how the Business Meeting went. I had the time to do this because immediately following the Business Meeting and in the same room was the Fannish Inquisition, which Lisa was also recording. I was sitting over to one side writing that report while bids for future Worldcons talked about their plans. Lisa logged several more hours than I did today, and when we went back to the hotel room after the Inquisition ended just before 15:00, she sent me out to get some lunch while she got some rest and made lunch out of some of the supplies we had cached in the hotel room.

After sitting with Ron Oakes and Mike Willmoth in the food court for lunch, I walked with Cheryl over to the Green Room, where she and I prepared for our respective panels. At 17:00 I was on a panel about different SF/F genre awards around the world. Unlike many of the panels here, this one was not over-subscribed and nobody was turned away from the discussion. We had panelists from Germany, Japan, Australia/New Zealand, and me. It went pretty well, and the audience seemed to like it.

Even though it was early, I knew I wouldn't have the time or energy to go off-site, and the food court restaurants close too early. (In some cases because they're running out of food as we're eating and drinking them out of stock.) Cheryl (who I met as she came out of her panel) and I got food, and we were joined by Susan de Guardiola, who will be the third member of the Hugo Awards Web Site CoverItLive coverage team tomorrow night as we bring you live coverage of the 2017 Hugo Awards Ceremony.

After dinner, I headed up to my room for a little while to cool off for a bit. Lisa had gone on to have dinner with Chris Carson and his friends (making use of their convention-supplied transit passes to go downtown on the train). I then put on my San Jose "bowling shirt" (many San Jose committee members are wearing matching bowling-league-style shirts this weekend to show a "brand identity" for Worldcon 76) and went down to the Winter Garden to help our convention set up our party.

( Worldcon 76 at Worldcon 75 )

I may end up with my picture in Locus because they took a group photo of all of us who were there in our San Jose team shirts.

( A Present from Kansas City )

I spent a lot of time talking with many people at the party about a lot of things, although admittedly much of it was WSFS Business, but around 23:00, Lisa and I headed back to the hotel room. We still have to be up early to be at the Business Meeting room for 9:00, but we now have much less worry about overflowing that room.