Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

It turns out the that wi-fi at the Village Hotel (where the Business Meetings are happening is just dandy, with 70 MBPS upload speed. Also, I was able to use Adobe Premiere to compile the individual segments of the Business Meeting into a single file, and that single file is much smaller than the combined individual segments. For example, the nine individual files off the camera for Day 3 (Saturday, First Main Meeting) total 25.7 GB, but the compiled file is only 5.1 GB. I was able to set Adobe Premiere to compile the files while I slept, and I set up my computer in far corner of the Sunday Business Meeting to upload. By the time we were done meeting, the Friday and Saturday recordings were uploaded.

Remember that these are not official recordings of Glasgow 2024. They are individual recordings made by Lisa Hayes as a member of WSFS as authorized by Standing Rule 1.6. This is why they are uploaded to my YouTube channel, not to the Worldcon Events channel.

Friday Preliminary Business Meeting:



Saturday First Main Business Meeting



Note that there was a long Executive Session regarding certain motions of the sensitive nature that was not recorded, by order of the meting. I will not talk about that meeting, per the instructions from the meeting.

There is also a 2024 WSFS Business Meeting Video Playlist" to which I will most more videos when I can get them compiled and uploaded.

You are welcome to share these videos with anyone you think appropriate. They are not secret.

The number of comments about Popular Ratification has dropped off. I did add commentary to explain the motion. (The Google Doc marginal comments will not appear in the version submitted to the Business Meeting except insofar as they are included in the Commentary.)

If you are a WSFS member (attending or not) of the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow and want to add your name to the co-sponsor list, let me know by the end of the day my time (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-7) on March 24.

Unless I'm given a compelling reason not to do so, I intend to submit this proposal to the 2024 WSFS Business Meeting next week.

If you are attending the 2024 Worldcon, I hope that you will attend the WSFS Business Meeting and vote in favor of this proposal. It will need to pass both the 2024 and 2025 Business Meetings in order to take effect, before first affecting new WSFS Constitutional amendments first passed at the 2026 Business Meeting.

When I first submitted Popular Ratification to WSFS back in 2014, one of the biggest complaints against it was that it did not give the second Business Meeting (the one held the year after the one that first passed a proposal) any way to amend the pending Constitutional amendment. So when I drafted what is now Version 1 of the new Popular Ratification, I provided for the ratification election to end 90 days before Worldcon, giving members time to draft changes to a ratified Constitutional amendment to be considered at that Worldcon at which it was ratified. But since that disenfranchised a large number of WSFS members (possibly a majority of the members of any given Worldcon), I let the WSFS members of the previous Worldcon also vote, just as as we allow them to participate in Hugo Award nominating.

The most immediate negative reaction to what is now labeled as Version 1 was that it was Bad to allow the members of the same Worldcon that gave a proposal first passage to vote. So in response to that, but to also eliminate the exclusion of a very large number of WSFS members from being able to vote at all, I composed what is now Popular Ratification Version 2 (starting on page 3 of the document.

Version 2 limits voting to only the WSFS members of the second Worldcon, and also requires that voting continue through the end of Site Selection voting (which usually ends on the third day of Worldcon). Therefore there would be both advance and at-convention voting. Members could vote by mail or in person. The results would be tallied after the close of voting and announced at the Site Selection Business Meeting, although there is no reason they couldn't be announced as soon as the convention knew them, such as in the convention newsletter or on the convention website.

Unless the members of the Business Meeting voted to suspend the rules or the Chair of the meeting permitted it, changes to Constitutional amendments ratified at a given Worldcon would not be in order because the deadline for submitting new business is 30 days before the Preliminary Business Meeting. However, people wanting to make such changes would have one option: they could submit a Constitutional amendment to modify an amendment pending ratification, with a provision that if the proposal pending ratification fails, the new motion would be automatically withdrawn. This does, however, mean that such "contingent amendments" could not be considered until after Site Selection Business. If there were a lot of contingent amendments, I think it likely that we'd see more Business Meetings going into "overtime" (meeting on the final day of the convention).

Anyway, now you have two versions of the proposal. Personally, I prefer Version 2 and only wrote Version 1 because I though that people placed a high value on being able to amendment amendments. If people think that it's more important that ratification be limited to only the second Worldcons' members, that's fine with me.

I only intend to submit one version of this proposal to this year's Business Meeting. (People who prefer alternative proposals could of course propose them as amendments by substitution.) Therefore I'd like to know which version people prefer.

Chicon 8 posted an updated version of the 2022 WSFS Business Meeting agenda today on their Business Meeting page. Even if you have looked at the agenda previously, I suggest you go review it again. There have been some late arrivals in the reports and proposals, and the business meeting staff has reorganized the order of business in a way that they consider more logical, rather than simply taking things first-in-first-out.

There are some complicated proposals, and there are a couple of resolutions that, if the meeting actually considers them, are likely to be very contentious. For once, I'm glad that I'm only the tripod-carrier (and person who puts the meeting videos online, technology permitting), and not the presiding officer this year.

I spend a while this afternoon moderately relaxed sitting behind the Worldcon 76 table.

( Con Table Kevin )

We just barely managed to complete the agenda this year within the 50 minutes. We got started very shortly after 11, and I adjourned the meeting sine die at 11:50 after we disposed of the last item of substantive business on the agenda.

( Not as much of a marathon as 2011 -- more of a sprint )

Seattle (SeaTac Doubletree Hotel, perhaps best known to fandom as the long-time home of Norwescon) won their unopposed bid for Westercon 73.

The four items up for debate this year (the longest agenda we've had in years) were:

• Membership Numbers: Would have more tightly defined how committees use members' membership numbers. Failed


• Defining "First Full Day": Would have imposed a technical definition of "first full day" of the convention, a term used in the Bylaws for certain required programming items. Failed


• Bidders at the Site Selection Table: Explicitly requires that eligible bid committees (that is, those that have filed bids, regardless of whether they are on the ballot) must provide at least one person to work at the Site Selection desk during at-con voting. Passed, but must be ratified at Westercon 72 in Utah next year to take effect.


• Westercon for All North America: Would have expanded Westercon from a Western North American convention to a all-of-North American convention. Postponed Indefinitely, which killed the proposal for this year without taking a direct vote on it. Like any other proposal, it can be re-introduced at a future meeting.

( Parliamentary Neepery about 'Postpone Indefinitely' )

We did have to push pretty hard to go through these items in such a short time. I'm grateful that the members agreed to time limits similar to those adopted for WSFS meetings. (Westercon doesn't have the same debate-time-setting mechanism as Worldcon; however, the meeting here voted to adopt such a practice for these proposals, and stuck with my recommendations.) I did my best to let the makers of the proposals have their say, for opponents to have an opportunity to speak, and to provide for some fair debate, but not an unlimited amount of it. I hope that nobody went away from the meeting thinking that they were treated unfairly. [Thanks to lindadee for spotting the unfortunate typo in this sentence as originally written.]

All votes were by uncounted show of hands or by unanimous consent, except for one vote (on an amendment to the wording of one of the proposals) where it was close enough to require a counted serpentine vote (the amendment lost 14-16).

With all business disposed of, we adjourned and managed to pack out of the room in time to hand it over to the Noon panel. I thanked lindadee (Secretary) and Ron Oakes (Videographer in Lisa's absence) for their help and carried my gear upstairs, where I set to work getting the video online and as many documents updated as I could. I also used the hotel room coffee maker to boil enough water to heat up some pot noodles that I bought earlier. I couldn't find the fork I'd brought back with me from 7-Eleven, so I used a couple of stir sticks from the coffee maker as chopsticks.

After dealing with getting the Westercon Business done, I changed back into my Worldcon 76 shirt and went down to our table. I was happy to spend time at the table talking to anyone who came by about Worldcon this year. Who knows? I may have even talked some folks who weren't planning on attending into making the trip to the Bay Area next month.

( More than just SMOF talk )

Amazingly, I've had enough time available to get out for dinner all four nights (counting Night 0). Tonight I walked with a group down to Il Fornaio for a good Italian dinner. All and all, I've had a really good time socializing with my friends, meeting new people, selling Worldcon memberships, and helping keep Westercon business ticking over.

Tonight is the final night for me here in Denver (my flight back to Reno is late tomorrow, so I'll be around until Closing Ceremonies before heading back to Denver Airport) and there are a couple of parties open tonight, I understand, so I'll go sample them before turning in. While I've slept well here, I am starting to feel the time catching up to me.

To nobody's surprise but to the bid committee's relief, Portland's bid for the 2016 Westercon was selected to host Westercon 69. The vote count was:

Portland OR: 64
Reno NV: 2
Spuzzum BC: 1
No Preference: 2

Total Ballots: 69
Total With Preference: 67
Needed to Elect (majority): 34

The Westercon Business Meeting lasted less than ten minutes and primarily consisted of the initial presentation of Lea Rush as the newly-seated Chair of Westercon 69. I left the video uploading this afternoon and it took over two hours to upload even on the wired connection because the basic service is throttled, which is part of why I can't upload the Fannish Inquisition videos until I get home.

( Business Meeting Video )