Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Effective earlier today, upon the election of my successor (Donald Eastlake III), I resigned as the Chairman of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee and as Chairman of the Board of Worldcon Intellectual Property, the California non-profit corporation whose directors are the members of the WSFS MPC. I did not resign as a member of the MPC/WIP Board. I am no longer an officer of either the MPC or WIP.

As detailed in the official announcement from WIP, I was "reprimanded for public comments that mistakenly led people to believe that we are not servicing our marks." I elected to resign to allow WIP to continue with its important activities without people continuing to assume that I officially spoke for WIP.

I was not part of the 2023 Hugo Award Administration Subcommittee, and this matter is not directly related to the 2023 Hugo Awards, but to possibly intemperate public statements that people interpreted as official WSFS or WIP or MPC policy.

While I remain an MPC member/WIP director, I am no longer in a leadership position.

We were able to sleep in a little bit for the first day of Worldcon, as our first commitment of the day was setting up the Winnipeg/Montreal table. But it was still a long day.

( Day 1: Stalled Site Selection )

My next commitment was for the WSFS Mark Protection Committee Meeting over in the other tower. (I did myself no favors by mistakenly telling the MPC members it was in the East tower when it was actually in the West.) I took may computer and webcam down there and got it set up so that MPC members not at Chicon 8 could attend. As it happens, only one of the non-attending members joined the Zoom call. This was one of the most well-attended MPC meetings I can remember in years.

( Attack of the Hotel Decorations )

After having a small bit of lunch in the hotel room, I went back to the Exhibit Hall. Lisa had been holding fort on the Luna Society table, and unfortunately she had been trapped there because C D Carson had been out running errands much longer than expected.

( Scenes from the Fan Tables )

Eventually, Chris came back and relieved Lisa. She and I checked the room where the Business Meeting will be and learned some bad news about which I'll write tomorrow. We then went to Bockwinkle's and got food for our dinner, then went back to the hotel room. Lisa stayed upstairs while I went to the Opening Ceremony.

( Opening Ceremony )

After the Opening Ceremony, I went back stage and Helen Montgomery gave me the Gavel of WSFS in trust for the Business Meeting. I also chatted briefly with Toastmasters Analee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders before making my way back upstairs to the lobby, where a long queue for the elevators discouraged me from going back to the hotel room for a while.

I ran in to Jared Dashoff, who told me to hold on to the Gavel of WSFS until tomorrow and to bring it to the meeting along with the other supplies I'm carrying as Assistant Videographer.

Eventually the queue cleared and I went back to the room, where I prepared some dinner from among our supplies. Alas, it's back to getting up early so Lisa and I can be in Crystal Ballroom B well before the first Business Meeting. It's going to be a lot more difficult to record and upload the Business Meeting than we hoped, and it's as very annoying story about which I will probably write tomorrow.

I am not a lawyer, but as Chair of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee (MPC), the entity that works to protect the intellectual property of the World Science Fiction Society, I've had to become conversant with issues having to do with trade and service marks. In light of a question I was recently asked (no, I won't say where), here are the symbols you can use to indicate that what you're using is a trademark or service mark, and whether the mark is registered with the appropriate authority or not. Much of this is cribbed from other sources, such as this one and the Wikipedia article on the subject.

( Trademark Neepery )

Something you don't need to do, and indeed really shouldn't do because it's silly, is to use one of the mark symbols on every single usage of the mark. You don't go around writing, say, Coca-Cola® every time you say you bought a Coke®, and not even the Coca-Cola Company would say that you should, as long as you're using the words to describe their actual beverage. Similarly, don't go around writing Hugo Award® and Worldcon℠ over and over just to be cute. But conversely, don't use the WSFS marks to describe something they aren't, and also, use the Hugo Award Usage Guidelines and the actual Hugo Award logo when you want to illustrate something that talks about the Hugo Awards. Don't use random images you can find by doing a Google Image Search on "Hugo Award" just because you personally like that design better. (Those images are from artists whose logo proposals were not selected by the MPC when we developed the logo, and in theory are there to allow those artists to display their work as exposure for them.) Using non-official Hugo Award logos actually hurts the Hugo Awards and Worldcon by eroding our intellectual property and creating confusion. So when it comes to writing about the Hugo Awards, accept no substitutes!

[Backdated entry because I was much too busy on Sunday to write anything.]

Sunday afternoon of Loncon 3 had an amazing hole open up in my schedule after the conclusion of WSFS Business (Business Meeting, Worldcon Chairs, MPC Meeting) that coincided with the performance of Girl Genius Radio Theatre in the "Second Stage" (a large theatre-style stage area, smaller than the main auditorium, but still big). The previous day, Phil had told me when I asked that I could turn up, and when I did so, he assigned me the title-character role in Deathwish DuPree and the The Return of Deathwish DuPree.

DuPree, the brother of the character in the canonical series, was to be portrayed as an Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling pirate. I attempted to buckle my swashes, but also to do things like drop out of the character's accent into what appeared to be asides in the script. (Phil later said that was good.) The audience seemed to laugh when I did so, as well, so I think it must have worked.

I had a fabulous time, and was utterly delighted to be able to have this much fun after the amount of work I'd done the previous three days of the convention. I'm so grateful to Phil and Kaja for letting me come be silly on stage with them again like this.

( No GGRT pix; I was busy acting! )

Soon enough fun and games were over. I'd had a late lunch and then an early dinner, both at the Indian restaurant on the main concourse. I coordinated plans with Cheryl Morgan for our Hugo Award coverage later that day and returned to the hotel for a short rest before things got busy again. But I had a bounce in my step from having been able to actually enjoy myself for a while rather than concentrate only on official business.

According to an announcement on the Chicon 7 Business Meeting page, the WSFS Business Meetings on Friday and Sunday will start at 10 AM, not 10:30 AM as originally scheduled and as the printed program schedule has it. The Saturday meeting will start at 10:30 AM as originally scheduled. To stress this: The Friday and Sunday WSFS Business Meetings will start 30 minutes earlier than the printed program schedule says. The WSFS Business Meetings will be in Columbus CD.

( Logistics of Business Meeting Scheduling )

Friday's Preliminary Business Meeting (10 AM, Columbus CD) will work through setting up the agenda for the Main Meeting, including receiving reports for various WSFS Committees and also receiving nominations for the WSFS Mark Protection Committee. This may sound like something you can skip, but bear in mind that this is where new constitutional amendments first come up, whereupon they can be killed without debate or amended. (I'm personally expecting to move an amendment on one of the proposed constitutional amendments affecting its "sunset clause," for instance.) There are people who have skipped Friday's meeting because "nothing important happens there," turned up on Saturday, and discovered that the thing they expected to debate wasn't even on the agenda, or was there in a form they didn't recognize, because the Friday meeting had killed/amended it out of shape. This is the WSFS equivalent of bills dying in committee, since the Friday meeting is (in effect) a Quasi-Committee of the Whole on Rules and Resolutions.

Saturday's Main Business Meeting (10:30 AM, Columbus CD) is where debate on constitutional amendments mostly happens. This particularly includes the pending constitutional amendments awaiting ratification: the Best Fancast Hugo and the substantial reworking of the Best Semiprozine Hugo. Should the proposed Young Adult Fiction Hugo survive the Preliminary Business Meeting, it will be debated and get its first vote here too. The Mark Protection Committee members will be elected here as well.

Sunday's Site Selection Business Meeting (10 AM, Columbus CD) will formally receive the results of the 2014 Worldcon Site Selection and also deal with any business for which there was insufficient time on Saturday. The Mark Protection Committee may meet after this meeting, although since there's only a single slot (albeit an elongated 2-hour slot thanks to the 30-minute advance), there may not be time for it here, in which case the MPC may not meet until Monday morning in the "overflow" business meeting slot.