2017 WSFS Business Meeting: First Main Business Meeting

Here's the summary of what happened at the First Main Business Meeting. As yesterday, you'll need to refer to the 2017 WSFS Business Meeting Agenda to understand what's happening. Anything not mentioned either happened yesterday or was not considered yet. If a vote count is not listed, it means it was either by unanimous consent or by a show of hands.

Standing Rule Changes:

A.2. No Vanishing Business: Revised version allowing items to be withdrawn up to two weeks before the final deadline for submitting new business PASSED and takes effect next year.

Constitutional Amendments. Ratified items take effect at end of current Worldcon and first apply to next year.

C.1. Best Series. POSTPONED to Saturday.
C.2. December is Good Enough: RATIFIED.
C.3. Two Years is Enough: RATIFIED (but includes grandfather clause that effectively means it does not apply until 2019 Worldcon.
C.11. Young Adult Award. Blank award name and provision related to it struck out of the proposal. The new award RATIFIED 65-27 and will be first presented (as the "Award for Best Young Adult Book" without a further specific name) in 2018.
D.4. Naming the YA Award. New proposal, moved up in the agenda by order of the Preliminary Meeting. "Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book" PASSED and sent to 2018 for ratification. The new YA category is not currently named "Lodestar." If this proposal is ratified next year, future YA Awards will be called "Lodestar."

D.6/D.7/D.8 (Hugo Category Change proposals). REFERRED to Hugo Award Study Committee. Will not be considered this year. Committee to report next year with recommendations.

That's where we ran out of time. Therefore, the remaining items for discussion on Saturday are, and in this order:

C.1. Best Series (10 min)
C.4. Three Stage Voting (3SV) (20 min)
C.5. Motion to Suspend E Pluribus Hugo for one year (10 min)
C.6. EPH+. (20 min) (Amendment C.6.1 debate time 5 min allocated from the 20 min.)
C.7. Defining North America. (4 min)
C.8. Retrospective Improvement Pt. 1. (8 min)
C.9. Retrospective Improvement Pt. 2. (8 min)
C.10. Universal Suffrage. (8 min)
C.12. Motion to suspend 5 and 6 for one year. (10 min)

New Constitutional Amendments

D.1. What Our Marks Really Are. (4 min)
D.2. The Reasonable Amendment. (4 min)
D.3. Make Room! Make Room! (6 min)

The Mark Protection Committee reported. The three incumbent members (John Coxon, Linda Deneroff, and Dave McCarty) were re-elected to three-year terms.

The Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee and Worldcon Runners Editorial Guide Committees reported and their members re-appointed.

The Long List Committee was continued as previously constituted.

IMPORTANT SCHEDULE NOTE

The Saturday Business Meeting convenes at 10:00 for Site Selection business, but other substantive business will not start until 11:00. However, there will be a report distributed in writing by this year's Hugo Award Administrator at 10:00 that people will probably want to read before voting on proposals coming up on Saturday. I therefore recommend that people interested in the substantive Hugo Award business but not in Site Selection come by between 9:30 and 10:00 and collect the report, then come back for 11:00.

After Site Selection for 2019 and Question Time for 2018 and 2020, the meeting will recess, and the Worldcon Chairs Photo will happen as fast as we can rearrange chairs. Not before 11:00 the meeting will reconvene for the Second Main Business Meeting. We are scheduled from 11:00-13:45 for this meeting. Anything not resolved on Saturday will hold over until Sunday, where was have 10:00-15:00 set aside. (Yes, I know some of you are leaving. There's nothing I can do about that.)

Worldcon 75 Day 3: Hugo Award Night

Worldcon 75 elected to present the 2017 Hugo Awards on the third night of the convention, which in this case was Friday. So this evening it was time for the Hugo Awards web site's annual live coverage of the Hugo Awards Ceremony.

( Meet the Team )

Susan de Guardiola did stellar work doing advance research on the finalists and taking scads of photos. When Cheryl rejoined us before the ceremony (just after we kicked off the "pre-show" on CoverItLive), she brought additional photos. Susan provided photos and posted the finalists in each category. I posted the winner in each category (which is a great time-saver; this live coverage is harder than you might think it is). Cheryl moderated comments, provided descriptions of what was happening, and did her usual great job of telling us how the event was unfolding.

Now there are some people who question the utility of mere "text-only" coverage of events like this now that video-streaming has become more common. However, tonight, I think the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee got their $200 worth. (That was the cost of upgrading our CoverItLive account to the level necessary to support such a large event.) That's because for whatever reason, the live video stream that Worldcon 75 intended to provide (and they've generally been pretty good at producing such streams, such as the one they're providing of the WSFS Business Meeting) failed to work. There were "casual" streams such as one produced by a fan in the audience, but the official video feed from the convention failed to materialize. As with the time that the UStream feed was shut down by a 'bot, our CoverItLive event attracted a lot of attention from the "refugees" who had gone to the YouTube site.

At peak, we had more than 1300 people watching our coverage, and I think that it may be the best show we've done yet. Besides being the place to go when the video streaming fails, CoverItLive uses a lot less bandwidth than video streaming, and thus people who have lower-bandwidth connections can watch it without being overwhelmed by the amount of data. Bandwidth out for us was not a problem, though. Wireless connectivity in the convention center is excellent, and we were also given access to the separate "press" wi-fi so we didn't have to compete with all of the people in the audience using social media during the event.

Cheryl and I had invitations to the post-Hugo party. Indeed, as Worldcon 76 was co-hosting the event with George R.R. Martin, we'd been encouraged to come down and work a shift. However, Cheryl is staying at the airport (and the trains don't run all night), and I have to be up earlier than most for the Business Meeting. (Yes, others attending have to be up early as well, but I'm one of those who needs to be there an hour before the meeting starts to do setup.) Furthermore, there had been something of a confusion over the delivery of certain boxes of WSFS papers that should have gone to 208 (Business Meeting) instead of the Hugo Backstage, so I said goodnight to Susan and Cheryl and moved a cart of boxes over to 208. And I got out of the hall just in time; they turned off the lights just as I was leaving!

You can see the 2017 Hugo Awards results here. We'll also clean up the Hugo Awards web site and get pictures of this year's trophy online soon — I hope tomorrow. We were not provided with photos in advance, nor did we get the detailed results until right after the ceremony, so we haven't had time to do more than the basic work on the site, and I need to get some rest, because the Business Meeting tomorrow is scheduled for four hours.

I am very grateful to Cheryl Morgan for sorting out our base from which we did our coverage, to Susan for the color commentary, photos, and analysis, and to everyone on the Worldcon 75 committee who came together to make our coverage of this year's Hugo Awards Ceremony a success. Thank you all!