Westercon 75 Business Meeting
Nov. 25th, 2023 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeShortly after 11:30 AM this morning, I called the Westercon 75 Business Meeting to order. The priority item of business was to officially receive the results of Westercon 77 (2025) Site Selection and to acknowledge that no valid bid was filed. After that, the meeting (after a couple of parliamentary maneuvers) resolved itself into a committee of the whole to consider both the selection of the 2025 Westercon and also to consider the two major scenarios regarding the future of Westercon. The committee of the whole officially being a separate meeting than the Business Meeting, it was recorded separately and both the main meeting and COTW were uploaded to YouTube.
The main meeting was thus held in two pieces with a long committee meeting held in between them. This recording edits the two halves together. You therefore see the setup and the final decisions adopted by the Business Meeting without the lengthy discussions in COTW.
The immediate tactical decision about Westercon 77 was to do what we did two years ago: to award Westercon 77 to what we are calling a "Caretaker Committee" of Lisa Hayes and me, with the understanding that we potentially will transfer the 2025 Westercon to another group that presents the committee with a compelling proposal. If the Caretaker Committee doesn't accept any of the proposals, as a last result, they will run the convention themselves.
Three potential groups expressed an interest in taking on the mantle of Westercon 77:
- BayCon, which for reasons that I do understand has moved to the US Independence Day Weekend.
- A low-key Seattle convention, with Linda Deneroff leading the proposal, possibly to be held over Memorial Day Weekend 2025
- A possible Las Vegas convention proposed by Scott Beckstead
All of these groups will have to work on proposals for the Caretaker Committee to evaluate. It seems likely that we'll nag people to come up with proposals sooner than later, rather than let it drift all the way to Westercon 76 Utah next July.
The meeting also gave first passage to the five bylaw amendment grouped as "Scenario 2" in what I laid before the meeting and published a few days ago: These proposals, if ratified at Westercon 76 next year, would remove the wording about holding Westercon during Independence Day weekend and would change all of the existing deadlines from hard-coded dates that assume the convention happens 4th of July with relative references against the first day of the convention.
If you are interested in seeing how the business meeting got to the conclusion, and the debate by those people who backed Scenario 1 (Retire Westercon), the recording of the Committee of the Whole's meeting (which was longer than the actual Business Meeting) is below:
The meeting adjourned with no other action taken.
The kill-the-Westercon group did make a brief appearance, but after it became clear in the COTW that the members present today were not interested in retiring Westercon, most of the Scenario 1 supporters appeared to leave early. Scenario 1 was not recommended by the COTW, so it never came to a vote before the Business Meeting.
For all that it took a couple of hours to reach the conclusions that it did, I think we did so in an orderly way, and it certainly seemed that most of the people present at the end were in favor of the actions taken. I'm glad I was able to facilitate this by generating what I think were well-written proposals, which allowed the members to concentrate on the strategic proposal alternatives rather than getting tangled up in nitpicking the technical wording.
There was a whole lot more that Lisa and I did on Saturday as we played Match Game SF, but that story will have to wait until later, as we're worn out. Fortunately for us, we have no commitments on Sunday morning and we're not leaving until Monday, so we can get some sleep! Also fortunately, but the bandwidth here at the Marriott is sufficient for me to upload these hour-long videos in a reasonable time.
The main meeting was thus held in two pieces with a long committee meeting held in between them. This recording edits the two halves together. You therefore see the setup and the final decisions adopted by the Business Meeting without the lengthy discussions in COTW.
The immediate tactical decision about Westercon 77 was to do what we did two years ago: to award Westercon 77 to what we are calling a "Caretaker Committee" of Lisa Hayes and me, with the understanding that we potentially will transfer the 2025 Westercon to another group that presents the committee with a compelling proposal. If the Caretaker Committee doesn't accept any of the proposals, as a last result, they will run the convention themselves.
Three potential groups expressed an interest in taking on the mantle of Westercon 77:
- BayCon, which for reasons that I do understand has moved to the US Independence Day Weekend.
- A low-key Seattle convention, with Linda Deneroff leading the proposal, possibly to be held over Memorial Day Weekend 2025
- A possible Las Vegas convention proposed by Scott Beckstead
All of these groups will have to work on proposals for the Caretaker Committee to evaluate. It seems likely that we'll nag people to come up with proposals sooner than later, rather than let it drift all the way to Westercon 76 Utah next July.
The meeting also gave first passage to the five bylaw amendment grouped as "Scenario 2" in what I laid before the meeting and published a few days ago: These proposals, if ratified at Westercon 76 next year, would remove the wording about holding Westercon during Independence Day weekend and would change all of the existing deadlines from hard-coded dates that assume the convention happens 4th of July with relative references against the first day of the convention.
If you are interested in seeing how the business meeting got to the conclusion, and the debate by those people who backed Scenario 1 (Retire Westercon), the recording of the Committee of the Whole's meeting (which was longer than the actual Business Meeting) is below:
The meeting adjourned with no other action taken.
The kill-the-Westercon group did make a brief appearance, but after it became clear in the COTW that the members present today were not interested in retiring Westercon, most of the Scenario 1 supporters appeared to leave early. Scenario 1 was not recommended by the COTW, so it never came to a vote before the Business Meeting.
For all that it took a couple of hours to reach the conclusions that it did, I think we did so in an orderly way, and it certainly seemed that most of the people present at the end were in favor of the actions taken. I'm glad I was able to facilitate this by generating what I think were well-written proposals, which allowed the members to concentrate on the strategic proposal alternatives rather than getting tangled up in nitpicking the technical wording.
There was a whole lot more that Lisa and I did on Saturday as we played Match Game SF, but that story will have to wait until later, as we're worn out. Fortunately for us, we have no commitments on Sunday morning and we're not leaving until Monday, so we can get some sleep! Also fortunately, but the bandwidth here at the Marriott is sufficient for me to upload these hour-long videos in a reasonable time.
