kevin_standlee | Entries tagged with discon

The actual Business Meeting staff (except Lisa) got to take this morning off. Lisa (and I) were up almost as early as every other day this week. She and I had to get down there to set up for the Worldcon Chairs photo session.

Because there was no Business Meeting and because the tables had been removed from the stage, it made it much easier to do the set up. We could move chairs around without worrying about anything else because this would be final item in this room. I moved chairs around at Lisa's direction while she set up the camera and confirmed its focus.

Around 9:30, most of the chairs arrived. Alas, we missed one: We forgot to send someone over to Ops to get Robbie Bourget.

Here's the set who we did get. After taking still photos, Lisa did the video. The DisCon III tech crew made one wireless microphone hot and provided an audio cable from their system that could connect to the big camera. This worked, and here we have the video after I added front and rear titles.

Watch on YouTube

After the photo session, most people left, but I rolled in a portable table that I had found in the hallway and set it up with chairs around it for my computer and that of

lindadee and for the other members of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee. The MPC then met (I was re-elected vice-chair and presided as the senior member present) for about an hour discussing things we hope to work on during the short "year" between today and the first day of Chicon 8.

More to come. Maybe I'll even get a chance to write about it as the convention charged toward its closing ceremony.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: w
Crossposts: https://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/2102619.html

After Lisa and I went out and bought the bungee cords for the WSFS banner, stopped by CVS to buy more drinks, and picked up some lunch, I went to the session planned to validate advance ballots received for 2023 Site Selection. I was one of Winnipeg's two representatives to the important task of validating the ballots received in advance. That does not mean counting the votes themselves. The ballots are folded in such a way that we can't see how people vote. This session is for confirming that ever ballot received in advance is from an eligible member of the current Worldcon who has paid the Advance Supporting Membership (Voting) Fee that makes them a member of the 2023 Worldcon regardless of who wins.

[Update, 12/15 20:40 PM: For reasons that will be made clear in a subsequent post, and at the request of DisCon III management, I have deleted most of this post.]

Ironically, we did voter validation in the same room where my first commitment during the convention itself will be: the Presidential Boardroom where the WSFS Mark Protection Committee will be meet on Wednesday afternoon.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: Washington, DC
Current Music: OTR: Boston Blackie
Crossposts: https://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/2100685.html

As announced earlier today, Mary Robinette Kowal has agreed to chair DisCon III, the 2020 Worldcon. She was appointed to the position by the board of directors of DC3's parent non-profit corporation after William Lawhorn resigned a few days ago. Lawhorn's resignation came after the WSFS division manager and most of the Hugo Award Administration Subcommittee announced their resignations.

Linda Deneroff took over as WSFS division manager, and a new set of people agreed to join the Hugo Administration Subcommittee (HASC). The HASC is very important in the structure of a Worldcon, because while the Worldcon committee can create and appoint members to the HASC, it cannot fire them, and per Section 3.13 of the WSFS Constitution, the HASC's decisions regarding the administration of the Hugo Awards (i.e. voter eligibility, counting of votes, etc.) are irrevocable by the Worldcon Committee. That is, there is a "firewall" between the HASC and the rest of the convention, including the staging of the Hugo Awards ceremony. The HASC is the equivalent of the "independent accountants" who tally the votes for the Academy Awards.

Why am I harping on this? Because Mary Robinette is a finalist for the Hugo Awards this year. Because the HASC existed and had members on it before she joined the convention committee, her involvement in the Awards has no connection to the counting of the ballots and the selection of the winners. The staging of the ceremony is a different part of the convention, and is part of the convention Events division, which does report to the Chair. The vote counting and other administration of the Awards, however, is solely the responsibility of the Hugo Awards Subcommittee.

Another practical matter is that nobody on the HASC is eligible for a Hugo Award, but that's currently moot because the finalists have already been announced.

I do go on about this because I've already seen one person saying that it's a "bad look" to have a Hugo Award finalist chairing the convention, and who seemed to misunderstand the wording in the DisCon III announcement explaining the "firewall" between the Chair and the Hugo administrators.

The new members of the HASC have not been added to the DisCon III website yet, but I expect that to be updated soon. There will also soon be an update to the WSFS Business Meeting staff, because Linda resigned as Business Meeting chair when she agreed to take over managing the entire WSFS Division.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada
Crossposts: https://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/2056565.html

In case anyone is wondering why I haven't weighed in on the massive shakeup at DisCon III, with first the WSFS Division Head and most (but not all) of the Hugo Administration team resigning, then with the Chair resigning: the reason is that I'm waiting for everything to finish shaking out. I'm a staff member in the WSFS division (Business Meeting), and I have a certain amount (but not an unlimited amount) of privileged information; however, I'm mostly going off of what has been announced in public. Linda Deneroff has been "promoted" from Business Meeting area head (chair) to WSFS division head. DC3's corporate parent is working on determining who the new Chair will be. The division heads have been meeting and keeping the ship afloat pending a clarification of the new management. The WSFS division can expect to see new appointments soon. I know what some of them are likely to be, but again, I'm waiting until things are official.

Some people seem to think that a Worldcon committee without a Chair would immediately dissolve in a million pieces. Things don't work like that. Events as large as a Worldcon are not and should not be dependent upon any individual. The Chair doesn't exist in a vacuum; they are responsible to the entity that was awarded the right to hold Worldcon (usually, but not always, a non-profit corporation or its equivalent like a company limited by guarantee or similar entity). When Tom Whitmore and I were co-chairs of the 2002 Worldcon, we were responsible to the SFSFC Board of Directors, which could have fired or replaced either or both of us. (On top of that, it's very difficult for corporations in California to lose all of their directors; you can't resign from a corporate board if you'd leave the corporation with no directors without permission from the Attorney General. So there's at least theoretically always someone who is responsible as a last resort.)

I have found out some things that some people believe about Worldcons that boggle me. I was recently chatting with one person who said they had heard "from someone who should know" that Sasquan (2015 Worldcon, Spokane) was sitting on "millions of dollars" of surplus from their convention. The entire convention's gross (not net) income was somewhere between $1 million and $2 million (like most recent Worldcons), and that's before the expenses. According to their last report, after paying expenses and traditional membership reimbursements and pass-along funds, the convention had a low-five-figure sum of remaining surplus funds, not "millions." Worldcon committees' finances are open, and they publish reports with the WSFS Business meeting saying what they took in and what they spent, and they continue to do so until they've spent all of their surplus funds. These reports are in the minutes of each year's WSFS Business Meeting, and those minutes are published on the WSFS web site. They may not make the most fascinating reading, but they're available to anyone who wants to look. Worldcons are not sitting on Unca Scrooge's Money Bin, really!

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada
Crossposts: https://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/2055553.html

Yesterday's big news in Worldcon was that Winnipeg announced that they are bidding to host the 2023 Worldcon.

( Logo and Press Release )

With this filing, the decision of DisCon III to ignore the WSFS Constitution and declare that the original deadline for filing bids to be on the ballot for the 2023 Worldcon Site Selection stands even though the convention was postponed from August to December is no longer academic. There's a real case before DC3, and I do hope that DC3 reconsiders their initial decision, not just because I'm a director of Winnipeg's parent non-profit corporation, but more importantly for the reason I cited in my original post about their decision: If a Worldcon ignores a clear directive in the WSFS rules, and for that matter one that is relatively easy to obey and is not ambiguous, what is to stop them from ignoring any rule?

As I noted above, I'm a director of CanSMOF, Winnipeg's parent non-profit corporation. When the CanSMOF board of directors began discussing how they were being approached by Canadian sites interested in hosting Worldcon, I was in a touchy situation, for multiple reasons. Not only am I the Parliamentarian of the 2021 WSFS Business Meeting, but I'd also already agreed to run Memphis' WSFS division should they win. I was obliged to navigate a minefield of conflicts of interest.

( All Sorts of 'Inside Baseball' Here )

Given my involvement with the Memphis committee, I was asked to open communication with them on Winnipeg's behalf. I had a nice conversation with Cliff Dunn, co-chair of Memphis, and I found myself somewhat unexpectedly in a group conversation with Winnipeg's bid chair (Terry Fong) and one vice chair (Linda Ross-Mansfield) and Memphis' co-chair, Kate Secor. This happened a few days before the Winnipeg bid was officially filed and the press release issued. (There were a few days of delay while the final version of the Tourism Winnipeg package was prepared and signed off by the appropriate person.) The bid was filed with DisCon III several hours before the bid issued the public announcement.

Winnipeg also asked me to run their WSFS division should they win. In order to (in my opinion) give equally fair (or unfair, depending on your point of view) advice to both bids, I am an "official double agent" as a member of both bid committees under the title "WSFS Advisor."

How will I vote? That's between me and my ballot. I wouldn't have agreed to be on either committee if I didn't think either of them could put on a good Worldcon. However, I will say that the 1994 Worldcon in Winnipeg is one of the best Worldcons I've ever attended, and I would rank it ahead of the one I co-chaired. Incidentally, while the quality isn't that great (it's a VHS-to-digital transfer), here's a video of the 1994 Hugo Awards Ceremony, during which I make a brief appearance (skip to 1:26 to see my five seconds of fame) as the stand-in to accept a Hugo Award for a finalist who apparently never got the letter asking them to designate someone if they weren't attending.

I would, however, encourage anyone who picks either Memphis or Winnipeg as their first choice pick the other one as their second choice. Worldcons are selected by the same preferential-ballot ranked-choice system that the Hugo Awards use. In a multi-way race, members' second preferences could easily make the difference. If no site gets a majority of first-place votes, the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated (usually this means eliminating the votes for ineligible write-in bids and None of the Above) and their votes redistributed to their next preference, with the process repeating until a candidate polls a majority.

In 1990, in a race between San Francisco, Zagreb and Phoenix on the ballot plus Hawaii as a filed and legitimate write-in bid, San Francisco eventually won, but not until Phoenix was eliminated: most of their votes redistributed to San Francisco, giving us (I was on the bid committee) the 1993 Worldcon. Your lower preferences may be vital, so consider them carefully when you cast your ballot.