The Future of Westercon

[kevin_standlee]

As I hope most people following me know, Westercon has fallen on hard times. While Tonopah was successful and fun for most of the 158 people who attended, it was affected by COVID and by BayCon moving its dates onto the 4th of July Weekend, apparently just ignoring that Tonopah's Westercon existed. The 2021 SeaTac and 2023 Anaheim Westercons dissolved, handing in their franchises to LASFS (which owns the Westercon service mark), and LASFS held both Westercons 73 and 75 in conjunction with Loscon. We once again this year have no bids filed to host the two-years-hence Westercon, although anyone could show up before the voting ends on the Friday evening of Loscon 49/Westercon 75. Assuming that doesn't happen, the Westercon 75 Business Meeting at Loscon 49 will have to decide what to do about site selection. However, I tend to think that before that, the meeting needs to give some thought to the future of Westercon.

It appears to me that there are two scenarios: Retire Westercon or make some changes to given a chance to restart, perhaps in a different form. I therefore have prepared a Google doc with two scenarios. You should be able to read this document without needing a Google account.

Scenario 1 is to Retire Westercon, and is simply a motion to repeal the Westercon bylaws.

Scenario 2 makes five separate changes to the Westercon Bylaws to disconnect it from the US Independence Day Weekend (even loosely), removes the Westercon zone restrictions (but retains the 104°W longitude eastern boundary in North America), and changes all of the hard-coded dates to dates relative to the date of the administering Westercon. This would at least allow in theory Westercon to be awarded to various conventions in Western North America who wanted to host it, or also allow "independent" Westercons to be organized.

Before asking questions, please read the document, where I've tried to address such questions. You may also want to read the current Westercon Bylaws for context.

I think that once the Business Meeting decides which path it wants to follow, it will make it easier to make a decision on what to do about Westercon 77.

Comments

[kevin_standlee]

Yes, of course you can share it. I've posted it to Facebook. The reason I first posted it to DW was because I have more control over the Westercon discussion there. The point of posting it and promoting it was because the members of Loscon 49/Westercon 75 need to take certain actions this year, and it's better to have something concrete for those who are interested to look at rather than trying to come up with language on the fly at a Business Meeting -- something that rarely works out well.