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kevin_standleeIn case anyone is wondering why I haven't weighed in on the massive shakeup at DisCon III, with first the WSFS Division Head and most (but not all) of the Hugo Administration team resigning, then with the Chair resigning: the reason is that I'm waiting for everything to finish shaking out. I'm a staff member in the WSFS division (Business Meeting), and I have a certain amount (but not an unlimited amount) of privileged information; however, I'm mostly going off of what has been announced in public. Linda Deneroff has been "promoted" from Business Meeting area head (chair) to WSFS division head. DC3's corporate parent is working on determining who the new Chair will be. The division heads have been meeting and keeping the ship afloat pending a clarification of the new management. The WSFS division can expect to see new appointments soon. I know what some of them are likely to be, but again, I'm waiting until things are official.
Some people seem to think that a Worldcon committee without a Chair would immediately dissolve in a million pieces. Things don't work like that. Events as large as a Worldcon are not and should not be dependent upon any individual. The Chair doesn't exist in a vacuum; they are responsible to the entity that was awarded the right to hold Worldcon (usually, but not always, a non-profit corporation or its equivalent like a company limited by guarantee or similar entity). When Tom Whitmore and I were co-chairs of the 2002 Worldcon, we were responsible to the SFSFC Board of Directors, which could have fired or replaced either or both of us. (On top of that, it's very difficult for corporations in California to lose all of their directors; you can't resign from a corporate board if you'd leave the corporation with no directors without permission from the Attorney General. So there's at least theoretically always someone who is responsible as a last resort.)
I have found out some things that some people believe about Worldcons that boggle me. I was recently chatting with one person who said they had heard "from someone who should know" that Sasquan (2015 Worldcon, Spokane) was sitting on "millions of dollars" of surplus from their convention. The entire convention's gross (not net) income was somewhere between $1 million and $2 million (like most recent Worldcons), and that's before the expenses. According to their last report, after paying expenses and traditional membership reimbursements and pass-along funds, the convention had a low-five-figure sum of remaining surplus funds, not "millions." Worldcon committees' finances are open, and they publish reports with the WSFS Business meeting saying what they took in and what they spent, and they continue to do so until they've spent all of their surplus funds. These reports are in the minutes of each year's WSFS Business Meeting, and those minutes are published on the WSFS web site. They may not make the most fascinating reading, but they're available to anyone who wants to look. Worldcons are not sitting on Unca Scrooge's Money Bin, really!
Some people seem to think that a Worldcon committee without a Chair would immediately dissolve in a million pieces. Things don't work like that. Events as large as a Worldcon are not and should not be dependent upon any individual. The Chair doesn't exist in a vacuum; they are responsible to the entity that was awarded the right to hold Worldcon (usually, but not always, a non-profit corporation or its equivalent like a company limited by guarantee or similar entity). When Tom Whitmore and I were co-chairs of the 2002 Worldcon, we were responsible to the SFSFC Board of Directors, which could have fired or replaced either or both of us. (On top of that, it's very difficult for corporations in California to lose all of their directors; you can't resign from a corporate board if you'd leave the corporation with no directors without permission from the Attorney General. So there's at least theoretically always someone who is responsible as a last resort.)
I have found out some things that some people believe about Worldcons that boggle me. I was recently chatting with one person who said they had heard "from someone who should know" that Sasquan (2015 Worldcon, Spokane) was sitting on "millions of dollars" of surplus from their convention. The entire convention's gross (not net) income was somewhere between $1 million and $2 million (like most recent Worldcons), and that's before the expenses. According to their last report, after paying expenses and traditional membership reimbursements and pass-along funds, the convention had a low-five-figure sum of remaining surplus funds, not "millions." Worldcon committees' finances are open, and they publish reports with the WSFS Business meeting saying what they took in and what they spent, and they continue to do so until they've spent all of their surplus funds. These reports are in the minutes of each year's WSFS Business Meeting, and those minutes are published on the WSFS web site. They may not make the most fascinating reading, but they're available to anyone who wants to look. Worldcons are not sitting on Unca Scrooge's Money Bin, really!
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Date: 2021-06-28 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2021-06-29 09:33 pm (UTC)