Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

[Backdated entry. I did not have time to do this yesterday.]

The Site Selection Business Meeting opened with the Site Selection Administrator presenting results. But if you watched the video, you will see that he was in a poor state and had difficulty with reading them. Here is a photograph of the detailed results.



As I said earlier, Robbie Bourget gave what amounted to a concession speech, I moved the destruction of the ballots, and that was that. Here's Chengdu's initial flyer — what most Worldcons with which I am familiar call "Progress Report Zero."



In answer to a question, they said their dates were August 23-29, 2023, which is seven days, not the traditional five. I'm not sure that's correct. Perhaps this will be clarified later.

After Question Time and other Site Selection Business, and a recess to allow the roughly 50% of the people in the room to leave, we got down to business. If you want to follow the results, go download the Agenda and turn to page 34 as I go through the seven items of new business. When I mention a show of hands, that means an uncounted show of hands. "Unanimous consent" means that nobody objected. Counted votes were taken by "serpentine" voting, where people rise (or make alternative arrangements with the floor manager) and count off one at a time with the count going back and forth through the room.

( Down to Business )

The meeting adjourned sine die at 12:26 PM, saving us from an "overflow" session.

The First Main Business Meeting was held at DisCon III on Friday morning, starting shortly after 10 AM. Prior to the meeting proper, we took a photograph of the 2021 Business Meeting staff.



The staff of the 2021 WSFS Business Meeting are, from left to right: Martin Pyne (floor manager), Kent Bloom (deputy chair), Todd Dashoff (timekeeper), Donald Eastlake III (chair), Janice Murray (secretary), Linda Deneroff (assistant secretary), and Lisa Hayes (videographer). Taken with permission of the subject of the photo prior to the start of the first Main Business Meeting.



Lisa (as always, assisted by Kuma Bear) recorded the meeting. The technical problem with the direct feed from the main sound board was corrected, so we had both the direct sound board feed and the camera's built-in microphone. However, we had a different issue today, as the room tech team had difficulty with the two floor microphones, and people were impatient and did not wait for microphones and instead just kept talking. This meant that it was hard for other people to hear them, and the people watching online probably couldn't hear them at all. I could get them (most of the time), albeit with lower quality, by switching audio feeds in the recording, but doing that video editing took hours. While we were finished by 12:30, what with little things like having lunch and all the time it took to do the editing, it was hours before I was even ready to compile the video in Adobe Premiere. Now that compilation takes more than an hour as well, even on this good gaming laptop, so I was able to let it sit there and spin (and the laptop got noticeably warmer), while Lisa and I went down to the Exhibit Hall where I hung around the Site Selection area until the final ballots were cast at 6 PM today. We then went back to the room and I set the video to uploading. While the actual upload was not too bad (the internet speed in this hotel being pretty decent), the YouTube processing also took more than an hour for this video, which runs a few seconds longer than two hours.



This First Main Business Meeting confirmed the ratification of the Best Series Hugo Award and of the Lodestar Award. (See the WSFS agenda for details.)

At this point, things did get interesting when Site Selection Administrator Tim Szczesuil asked and was granted permission to introduce a privileged resolution addressing Site Selection.

( Parliamentary Neepery )

Copies of the proposal were distributed. (As required by rule, if you submit something after the deadline, you have to make your own copies.) The original wording got neeped over, mostly IMO non-substantively, but in one case it might be important. As I understood it, the final version was:

---

Short Title: Required Site Selection Information

Resolved, That it is the sense of the WSFS Business Meeting that any Site Selection ballot that does not contain a Membership Number, Name, Signature, and Address that meets the country of origin's requirements should be counted as "No Preference."

---

"No Preference" is the same as an abstention or a blank ballot. Any ballot cast as "No Preference" does not count toward the total for determining a majority. The person casting the ballot still gets the supporting membership in the subsequent Worldcon, but their ballot is counted as an abstention. For example, if there were 100 No Preference votes, 5 for Luna City, and 3 for Tonopah, Luna City would win 5-3, with 8 votes cast that have a preference, and thus 5 votes (a majority of 8) needed to win.

Also note that "None of the Above" is not the same thing as "No Preference." NOTA means the voter doesn't like any of the bids on the ballot and wants the Business Meeting to decide. NOTA does count toward the total number of votes cast for the purpose of determining a majority. I harp on this because I find people in every election who get the choices confused.

After a debate, the Business Meeting passed this resolution on a 47-36 vote. This is a non-binding resolution and is advisory only. Except in certain extraordinary cases (detailed in the Constitution), the Business Meeting cannot bind the site selection administrator. Any rulings on cases active with the current election are administered by the current convention.

After the excitement, we got back to grinding through business. The meeting ratified all nine of the constitutional amendments passed on from last year's Worldcon. (These amendments were initially passed in Ireland, then technically rejected and then re-passed in New Zealand, in order to evade the problem that hardly any WSFS members could actually get to the meeting in Wellington.) It did help that many of the motions were minor technical corrections, but because some people have difficulty understanding that, some of them got debated anyway.

Conveniently, we got through the last of the eleven pending ratification votes at 12:15 PM, which meant we were able to adjourn before the hard stop required at 12:30 by the tech team needing to turn the room for 1 PM items.

Saturday's Site Selection Business Meeting will start with the results of the 2023 Worldcon Site Selection, followed by the initial presentation from the 2023 Worldcon, followed by Question Time for the other seated Worldcons, and potentially Question Time for bids for 2024. After that, we'll start considering the seven new constitutional amendments introduced this year. If we get through all of them on Saturday, we will not need a Sunday "overflow" meeting, but these seven are not quite as simple as most of today's eleven, so I'm still expecting a Sunday morning meeting.

Up front: I am chairman of this year's WSFS Business Meeting. I am not taking a position on the items I mention below. I bring them up because they seem to bring together a series of parallel complaints about four Hugo Award categories, and I'm raising the possibility of these changes as one possible solution. Whether I think they are good solutions or not I'm not saying. It's difficult to give an answer to complex technical questions in Twitter-speak, so I also want this as something to which to point when people raise any of the topics.

( Problems Observed With Four Categories )

In my opinion, a fairly significant proportion of the SF/F community doesn't understand the historical reasons for the evolution of these categories, and rejects the reasoning as (at best) outdated when it's explained to them. Fair enough. Times change, and there is a process for WSFS to adjust to those changes. Here's one possibility for changing the categories around that might settle some of the disputes, although I'm sure it would create more. Remember, I'm not personally advocating these, nor will I take a stand on them. I'm already going to have to recuse myself from consideration of one constitutional amendment this year; I don't want to have to do it more than once.

( A Modest Set of Proposals )

The net effect of the above would be to kill three categories and create two, reorganizing the people and works that are eligible in the categories, and remove a bone of contention about Best Related Work.

I recognize many other issues that this would raise, and again, I'm not actually advocating the changes. I am, however, trying to provide a framework for people who are pressing for change but are not necessarily WSFS rules geeks like me to begin thinking about what constructive changes that have some possibility of getting past the Business Meeting (don't forget practical politics) might be.

If anyone wants to take a shot at doing any or all of these changes, contact me and I will work with you to develop the specific wording and to put it in the proper format for submitting to this year's Business Meeting. As I hope everyone reading me knows by now, I generally will help anyone draft proposals, even those I personally oppose, in order to try and minimize technical arguments over the meaning of a proposal. This year, doing that is part of my job description on the 2015 Worldcon committee.

Administrative note: You don't need a LiveJournal account to reply to this, but posts from non-members go into moderation, and I ask non-members to sign their posts so I know who you are before I approve them. Also, for some reason my e-mail is eating LJ notifications (not junking them; never delivering them), so I may not necessarily see your responses immediately.