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The site selection ballot for the 2025 West Coast Science Fantasy Conference (Westercon 77) was released this week. Voting will take place by mail at at Westercon 75, which will be held as part of Loscon 49, November 24-26, 2023 at the LAX Marriott.
The originally scheduled Westercon 75 was canceled and its two official functions (Business Meeting and Site Selection) folded into Loscon 49.
No groups filed bids to host Westercon 77 by the April 15 deadline. Because the deadline is hard-coded into the Westercon bylaws, it could not be extended, even though the convention date was effectively postponed by several months. This is different than Worldcon, where the various deadlines are defined relative to the date of the convention.
The final deadline for filing a bid for Westercon 77 is the end of on-site voting at 6 PM PST on November 24, 2023. The important issue here is that if a bid files by then (no bids have done so as of today), they can win as a write-in candidate.
If no valid bid wins the site selection election, the selection goes to the Westercon business meeting on November 25. This does currently seem to be the most likely situation, and it means it will be the third year in a row where the Business Meeting has had to choose the site of Westercon. The meeting can select a committee (ignoring nearly all other restrictions about Westercon when doing so) or decide that it cannot decide, in which case the LASFS Board of Directors is tasked with the decision. This latter option has never been invoked under the current Westercon bylaws.
I'll have more to say about Westercon in a few days, once I finish writing up possible scenarios for consideration by this year's Business Meeting in Los Angeles.
The originally scheduled Westercon 75 was canceled and its two official functions (Business Meeting and Site Selection) folded into Loscon 49.
No groups filed bids to host Westercon 77 by the April 15 deadline. Because the deadline is hard-coded into the Westercon bylaws, it could not be extended, even though the convention date was effectively postponed by several months. This is different than Worldcon, where the various deadlines are defined relative to the date of the convention.
The final deadline for filing a bid for Westercon 77 is the end of on-site voting at 6 PM PST on November 24, 2023. The important issue here is that if a bid files by then (no bids have done so as of today), they can win as a write-in candidate.
If no valid bid wins the site selection election, the selection goes to the Westercon business meeting on November 25. This does currently seem to be the most likely situation, and it means it will be the third year in a row where the Business Meeting has had to choose the site of Westercon. The meeting can select a committee (ignoring nearly all other restrictions about Westercon when doing so) or decide that it cannot decide, in which case the LASFS Board of Directors is tasked with the decision. This latter option has never been invoked under the current Westercon bylaws.
I'll have more to say about Westercon in a few days, once I finish writing up possible scenarios for consideration by this year's Business Meeting in Los Angeles.
