kevin_standlee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kevin_standlee) wrote2022-07-03 10:52 pm
kevin_standlee) wrote2022-07-03 10:52 pm
Entry tags:
Westercon 74 Day 3: Giving the Members the Business
Because John Hertz volunteered to do the "graveyard" shift in the Tonopah Convention Center, we did not have to close overnight; however, I did need to be there by 7 AM to let him leave and get some sleep. Chris Marble, who has had to step in as the remaining deputy Hospitality manager with a tripled workload, arrived a little while later while I was still struggling to figure out how to make the coffee pot work, rescued me from my incompetence.
I stuck around in the TCC dealing with overnight messages, sending information to the newsletter, answering questions, posting updates to the convention's social media, and having a light breakfast of instant oatmeal and coffee.
Mid-morning, I went back to the hotel and changed back out of my "Sheriff of Westercon" outfit to my business suit. No, it's not another game show, but in this case being Chair of the Westercon Business Meeting. This is the first time in many years that the convention chair also chaired the Business Meeting. (Indeed, I don't recall it ever happening, but I'm pretty sure it has happened historically.)
Annoyingly, I forgot to have anyone take pictures. Lisa did record the meeting, but I will not have time to clip the video out of a much longer recording and upload it until we get home.
The primary business this year was dealing with Westercon 76 (2024) site selection. As those of you following me know, an extremely late write-in bid for Utah in 2024 (for a hotel hear SLC airport) appeared just a few days before the convention. There were no bids on the ballot itself, although somehow there was one person who told me later that they were convinced that the Utah bid's name was pre-printed on the ballot. (I offered him $2 to produce such a ballot. I'll never have to pay off. I know what the 2024 Westercon Site Selection Ballot looks like.)
55 of the 60 votes cast in the election wrote in Utah. (There were 2 No Preference, 2 for "Any State that protects abortion rights," and 1 None of the Above.) That should have made it a slam-dunk election; however, there was hitch. Utah had organized itself rather hastily, and while they had the necessary committee and facility contract required by the Westercon Bylaws, they did not have a non-profit organization, which is required by the bylaws for any filed bid, whether it not it appears on the ballot. This means that their bid was technically ineligible, and that means that no eligible bid won, and the decision was referred to the Business Meeting.
When the Business Meeting selects a Westercon, they are not constrained by most of the site selection rules other than the site has to be anywhere in North American west of 104° W or in Hawaii. You don't have to have a non-profit organization.
It took a while to explain this distinction to the meeting, and in order to try and make a decision without nearly deadlocking the meeting the way we did in a similar situation in 2011, we resolved the meeting into a committee of the whole, with Martin Pyne presiding, to discuss the decision. The key here is that in COTW, you can take non-binding "straw votes" and do other informal things in order to reach a decision that you recommend that the main meeting adopt. After a test vote and some discussion, the COTW recommended that the meeting select Utah despite their technical deficiencies, while the Utah bid pledged to work to either obtain the backing of a non-profit organization or form a new non-profit for that purpose.
Note that when we went into COTW, I took off my suit jacket and went down onto the floor of the meeting, with Martin presiding. When the COTW rose, I resumed the Chair and asked for the report of the COTW. We as a meeting then proceeded to vote on the recommendation. A three-fourths vote being necessary to select Utah, the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of selecting Utah.
After this, a person complained that I had not called on her when she wanted to speak. I frankly had not seen her. After a lot of discussion about this, Sharon Sbarsky moved to reconsider the vote to select Utah, which, if a majority had voted to do, would have brought the site selection vote (3/4 still required) back onto the floor and the person objecting that she had not been able to make her speech against Utah. The meeting voted overwhelmingly against reconsideration, and that made the result effectively final.
There was another piece of business, which was the ratification of a change to the bylaws to lower the vote threshold for selecting a Westercon site at the Business Meeting from three-fourths to two-thirds. There was a bunch of discussion, including some that exasperated me by people trying to show how clever they were. Also, there was a member who asked multiple questions of the chair asking the chair to express opinions about the effect of the proposal. I repeatedly said that it would be inappropriate for the Chair to express a subjective opinion about the effect of a proposal. Eventually, the meeting voted overwhelmingly to ratify the change, which will take effect next year.
We then started to adjourn, but lots of people wanted to keep talking without an actual question on the floor, and we thrashed around for another ten minutes before finally managing to adjourn. I'd hoped to keep the meeting to an hour, but it ran 1:05 including the time we were in Committee of the Whole.
We turned the Main Hall back into Hospitality and I spent much of the next hour talking with people about what had just happened. But soon it was time for Kuma Bear's big moment: The Kuma's Korner Gathering.
Kuma Bear is on the Chair's Staff here at Westercon 74 as Stuffed Member Liaison, and he invited all of Westercon's stuffed members to attend this meeting and photo opportunity.
The stuffed members' humans helped them arrange themselves.
There were many pictures taken.
After a very successful event at Kuma's Korner, Lisa and I retired to our hotel room for a few hours. I got us lunch from A&W (the food truck being closed today). Kuma did not initially come back with us, as he was having his portrait drawn by Mo Starkey. After I brought lunch back to our hotel room, I trotted down to the TCC and retrieved Kuma. We had lunch and slept for a few hours, leaving the convention safely in the hands of the many other members of the committee and staff that have been working to make Westercon 74 happen.
Around 7 PM, I changed back into my Sheriff of Westercon outfit and we returned to the TCC for the evening festivities. I took up station at a table in the TCC and did some website maintenance (posting the latest newsletter to the site) and social media work (posting notices of the newsletter to Twitter and Facebook. I also composed messages to various people and groups about the Westercon Site Selection. I made dinner for myself from some of the material in Hospitality and talked with lots of people. It was fun.
Attendance here is lighter than I had hoped. I knew we would have no-shows. Some of our attending members have died in the past three years and others have scratched due to COVID and due to BayCon having moved to the same weekend as Westercon, and others, even those who had purchased attending memberships, balked when they realized just how far away Tonopah is from a major airport. However, my 20% no-show projection seems to have been overly optimistic. As of the end of the day on Sunday, only 58% of the 303 attending members had collected their membership badges. That's too bad. Those people who didn't attend have missed a great convention, with strong programming and a Con Suite that most conventions could only dream of having.
I stuck around in the TCC dealing with overnight messages, sending information to the newsletter, answering questions, posting updates to the convention's social media, and having a light breakfast of instant oatmeal and coffee.
Mid-morning, I went back to the hotel and changed back out of my "Sheriff of Westercon" outfit to my business suit. No, it's not another game show, but in this case being Chair of the Westercon Business Meeting. This is the first time in many years that the convention chair also chaired the Business Meeting. (Indeed, I don't recall it ever happening, but I'm pretty sure it has happened historically.)
Annoyingly, I forgot to have anyone take pictures. Lisa did record the meeting, but I will not have time to clip the video out of a much longer recording and upload it until we get home.
The primary business this year was dealing with Westercon 76 (2024) site selection. As those of you following me know, an extremely late write-in bid for Utah in 2024 (for a hotel hear SLC airport) appeared just a few days before the convention. There were no bids on the ballot itself, although somehow there was one person who told me later that they were convinced that the Utah bid's name was pre-printed on the ballot. (I offered him $2 to produce such a ballot. I'll never have to pay off. I know what the 2024 Westercon Site Selection Ballot looks like.)
55 of the 60 votes cast in the election wrote in Utah. (There were 2 No Preference, 2 for "Any State that protects abortion rights," and 1 None of the Above.) That should have made it a slam-dunk election; however, there was hitch. Utah had organized itself rather hastily, and while they had the necessary committee and facility contract required by the Westercon Bylaws, they did not have a non-profit organization, which is required by the bylaws for any filed bid, whether it not it appears on the ballot. This means that their bid was technically ineligible, and that means that no eligible bid won, and the decision was referred to the Business Meeting.
When the Business Meeting selects a Westercon, they are not constrained by most of the site selection rules other than the site has to be anywhere in North American west of 104° W or in Hawaii. You don't have to have a non-profit organization.
It took a while to explain this distinction to the meeting, and in order to try and make a decision without nearly deadlocking the meeting the way we did in a similar situation in 2011, we resolved the meeting into a committee of the whole, with Martin Pyne presiding, to discuss the decision. The key here is that in COTW, you can take non-binding "straw votes" and do other informal things in order to reach a decision that you recommend that the main meeting adopt. After a test vote and some discussion, the COTW recommended that the meeting select Utah despite their technical deficiencies, while the Utah bid pledged to work to either obtain the backing of a non-profit organization or form a new non-profit for that purpose.
Note that when we went into COTW, I took off my suit jacket and went down onto the floor of the meeting, with Martin presiding. When the COTW rose, I resumed the Chair and asked for the report of the COTW. We as a meeting then proceeded to vote on the recommendation. A three-fourths vote being necessary to select Utah, the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of selecting Utah.
After this, a person complained that I had not called on her when she wanted to speak. I frankly had not seen her. After a lot of discussion about this, Sharon Sbarsky moved to reconsider the vote to select Utah, which, if a majority had voted to do, would have brought the site selection vote (3/4 still required) back onto the floor and the person objecting that she had not been able to make her speech against Utah. The meeting voted overwhelmingly against reconsideration, and that made the result effectively final.
There was another piece of business, which was the ratification of a change to the bylaws to lower the vote threshold for selecting a Westercon site at the Business Meeting from three-fourths to two-thirds. There was a bunch of discussion, including some that exasperated me by people trying to show how clever they were. Also, there was a member who asked multiple questions of the chair asking the chair to express opinions about the effect of the proposal. I repeatedly said that it would be inappropriate for the Chair to express a subjective opinion about the effect of a proposal. Eventually, the meeting voted overwhelmingly to ratify the change, which will take effect next year.
We then started to adjourn, but lots of people wanted to keep talking without an actual question on the floor, and we thrashed around for another ten minutes before finally managing to adjourn. I'd hoped to keep the meeting to an hour, but it ran 1:05 including the time we were in Committee of the Whole.
We turned the Main Hall back into Hospitality and I spent much of the next hour talking with people about what had just happened. But soon it was time for Kuma Bear's big moment: The Kuma's Korner Gathering.
Kuma Bear is on the Chair's Staff here at Westercon 74 as Stuffed Member Liaison, and he invited all of Westercon's stuffed members to attend this meeting and photo opportunity.
The stuffed members' humans helped them arrange themselves.
There were many pictures taken.
After a very successful event at Kuma's Korner, Lisa and I retired to our hotel room for a few hours. I got us lunch from A&W (the food truck being closed today). Kuma did not initially come back with us, as he was having his portrait drawn by Mo Starkey. After I brought lunch back to our hotel room, I trotted down to the TCC and retrieved Kuma. We had lunch and slept for a few hours, leaving the convention safely in the hands of the many other members of the committee and staff that have been working to make Westercon 74 happen.
Around 7 PM, I changed back into my Sheriff of Westercon outfit and we returned to the TCC for the evening festivities. I took up station at a table in the TCC and did some website maintenance (posting the latest newsletter to the site) and social media work (posting notices of the newsletter to Twitter and Facebook. I also composed messages to various people and groups about the Westercon Site Selection. I made dinner for myself from some of the material in Hospitality and talked with lots of people. It was fun.
Attendance here is lighter than I had hoped. I knew we would have no-shows. Some of our attending members have died in the past three years and others have scratched due to COVID and due to BayCon having moved to the same weekend as Westercon, and others, even those who had purchased attending memberships, balked when they realized just how far away Tonopah is from a major airport. However, my 20% no-show projection seems to have been overly optimistic. As of the end of the day on Sunday, only 58% of the 303 attending members had collected their membership badges. That's too bad. Those people who didn't attend have missed a great convention, with strong programming and a Con Suite that most conventions could only dream of having.
no subject
no subject