Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I couldn't say anything about it until they officially announced by distributing their PR 0, but Lisa, Kuma Bear, and I were selected as the Fan Guests of Honor of Westercon 72 in Layton (Salt Lake City) Utah for 2019. We are very honored to have been selected to be Westercon's guests.

Incidentally, if anyone wonders how this interacts with the Utah in 2019 NASFiC bid, especially considering that I've already been FGoH of a NASFiC (2005, SeaTac): As I understand it, the plan, consistent with past Westercon/Worldcons, is for the NASFiC, should Utah win that bid, to have a separate group of Guests of Honor in addition to Westercon's guests.

After lunch, we newly-minted Westercon Guests kitted up and set forth on an expedition under the leadership of Colonel Chinstrap.

( Chinstrap and Company )

After a few hours about in costume, we changed back to "civvies" and had an early dinner at My Big Fat Greek Restaurant (which we not only like a lot, but is nearby) before getting ready for Match Game SF.

An afterthought about the 2020 NASFiC: Assuming that Dublin wins their 2019 Worldcon bid and New Zealand wins its 2020 Worldcon bid, we will have an interesting case regarding the 2020 NASFiC election. The 2020 NASFiC will be selected in 2019, and the 2019 NASFiC, not the Worldcon, will administer the election. Only members of the 2019 NASFiC will be eligible to vote on the 2020 NASFiC site. Members of the 2019 Worldcon will not be eligible to vote unless they also join the 2019 NASFiC as at least a supporting member. I am trying to make this clear because, based on the past times a NASFiC has selected a NASFiC, it's likely that Worldcon members will think that they are eligible when they are not, and some of them are going to get testy about it.

Anyone bidding for the 2019 NASFiC should consider that they'll be running one official WSFS voting function: 2020 NASFiC Site Selection. There are no Awards. There is no Business Meeting. But there will be Site Selection. Bear this in mind if you consider throwing your hat in the ring to host the 2019 NASFiC.

If you are interested in bidding to host the 2019 Westercon, you have one month to go before the filing deadline of April 15, 2017. Because no bids filed before the first deadline, any site in Western North America (west of 104° west longitude, including points in both Mexico and Canada) or in Hawaii is eligible to host Westercon 72.

The interaction of site selection bidding for Westercon and NASFiC leads to some interesting possibilities. Because I've already answered some of the questions on this subject in individual queries, and because I'm the division manager over what will be 2019 NASFiC Site Selection should it become necessary (as seems likely now), I'll discuss this in a later post. Short version: a site can bid to host both Westercon and NASFiC if it is eligible to host both, although the bidding for each is separate and takes place at different places and times.

For some years now, the WSFS Mark Protection Committee has wanted to re-design the Worldcon, NASFiC, and WSFS web sites. The old sites were showing a great deal of age, and were generally quite difficult to update, requiring a small number of people with the necessary access to have the time to do the updates. This is no knock on those people (some of whom read this LJ), but having pinch points was a problem for us. However, the issues in getting the sites changed were many, mostly political more than technical, as study committee after working group tossed around their own ways of doing the One True Perfect In Every Way Web Site. There were also difficulties getting the domains untangled, as they'd been acquired by multiple well-meaning people, and it took several years to get them straightened out and under the control of officers of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee (which pays the bills, out of the small amount of money that Worldcon committees pay to fund the MPC).

During these years of wrangling over what to do about the Worldcon/WSFS/NASFiC sites, the MPC set up the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee, which was able to set up the Hugo Awards web site separately. Cheryl Morgan did the heavy lifting and set up the WordPress site that we've been using ever since. I do most of the maintenance these days, but multiple people in geographically dispersed areas have the keys to the site, so if I drop dead, other people will be able to keep things running.

The last straw in the Worldcon sites discussion came when George Mitchell, who had been hosting the sites for us for free since the 1990s, came to the WSFS Business Meeting in Spokane and said, roughly speaking, "It's time for you to leave." The WSFS MPC discharged the last vestige of the Worldcon Website Working Group (which had, thanks to Mike "Dr. Plokta" Scott, fixed the mess that was the domain registration) and authorized the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee to sort out a solution on the other sites.

A couple of months ago, Cheryl Morgan, with me consulting, but with her again doing the heavy lifting, built new sites for Worldcon, NASFiC, and WSFS, and we moved the actual hosting over to the same commercial service (Pair.com) we use for the Hugo Awards site.

All the sites intentionally share a family resemblance. All of them can be maintained by people who are not heavy duty HTML wizards. All of them have relatively simple graphics and structure. It's not flashy, but it's clean and I hope easy to use.

One issue though: The old site's file structure was a mess. I made the executive decision (so don't blame Cheryl) to let all of the old "deep links" to individual files on the old site break. So if you have a deep link to, say, the old versions of the WSFS Constitution or old WSFS minutes, those links have now broken in favor of the new structure. I'm sorry about that, but if we'd spent much more time trying to maintain the old structure and meet our mandate to migrate the site to the new servers this "WSFS year," it would not have gotten done.

An additional issue pointed out by Mike Glyer is that search engines still have the old (now broken) links in their cached searches. So until those links refresh, your web searches may lead you to a dead end. Rest assured, however, that the old files, particularly the various WSFS documents, are still on the site, just in a different location than they once were.

I've been wanting to get this redesign done since at least 2008, and I'm glad it's finally done. I'm also extremely grateful to Cheryl Morgan for doing the work and to the rest of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee for authorizing the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee to get the job done.

I have managed to tag, caption, and release the remaining photos I took using my phone during our Detcon 1 Trip. Those of you who followed my Twitter feed saw some of them along the way. Here's all of them in sequential order from leaving Emeryville for Chicago to our return two weeks later with a NASFIC in the middle of it all.

There are a bunch of photos of amazing Colorado River/Rocky Mountain scenery. Trust me when I say that these photos do not do justice to the views, many of which can be seen only from the train, or possibly from a boat floating down the river. This is trip you should take sometime. I'm lucky to have been through it four times; three eastbound and now one westbound.

The first two mornings we were in Detroit, when we went down to the restaurant for breakfast, we waltzed in and sat right down, with most of the others there being other fans. Saturday was different. There were large family reunions booked into the hotel, and the restaurant was packed. We had a twenty minute wait to be seated, but we did get fed. However, by the time we had eaten, it was already time to put on our baseball gear and walk to Comerica Park for today's NASFiC Baseball Fan Outing to the Detroit Tigers-Cleveland Indians game.

( Take Us Out to the Ball Game )

After the ball game, we bade farewell to our fellow SF fans, most of whom had to get back to the convention sooner than us, and went to Greektown where we had a late lunch at the same place we ate yesterday, the New Parthenon restaurant.

( A Bit of Food Talk )

We went back to the hotel, set our baseball caps aside to dry, and I returned to the Marriott, leaving Lisa to wash her hair and get cleaned up a bit.

( Evening at NASFIC )

As I was heading back up to the 69th floor after the Masquerade, I realized that I didn't have my membership badge. Thinking that I'd dropped it somewhere in the ballroom, I retraced my steps back to the 3rd level, but couldn't find it. Then it hit me: I returned to the Minneapolis party, found Lisa, and she handed me my badge that I'd left in care of Kuma Bear while we were having our pictures taken. This was a case of so many people knowing me on sight that I'd simply walked past most security without realizing I didn't have my badge.

With the badge situation squared away, Lisa and I made a round of the parties.

( NASFiC Chair and Party Host )

It was too late for the Food Court tonight, so we headed for Greektown again, where we ate at the open-all-night place next to the New Parthenon. It was okay, and I'm glad we went, but it's nothing special.

We could have jumped on the People Mover (and completed the set because the section between Greektown and Millennium Center is the only section we haven't yet traveled), but with full stomachs, we elected to walk back to the Crowne Plaza. It was pretty late, and yes, we were still in our costumes from the convention, but as long as we kept to well-lit streets we felt pretty safe. It did not take long before we were back in our hotel room being very grateful we could take off our shoes and socks. I think that we have logged more than 15,000 steps every day we've been here.

It was a good day at Detcon 1, albeit one where much of our convention day was spent off site. I apologize to my fellow SJ in 2018 bid committee members for not pulling my full weight with our activities at the convention. I've been taking it relatively easy and enjoying myself instead of working. and trying to not feel guilty about doing so.

With few specific commitments to Detcon 1, we didn't have to get up super early, other than we had an included breakfast that ended at 11 AM. After breakfast, we set out for an easy walk around downtown Detroit to see where things were at rather than heading straight down to the Marriott where the NASFIC is at.

( Detroit Photos )

After our mini-sightseeing walk, where we also scoped out restaurants at which we might want to eat (and tried to confirm that they would be open nights and weekends), we went into the Ren Center and eventually found our way to Registration. The Ren Center is a maze of circular passages and ramps, and it's a bit disorienting to find your way there.

I picked up my materials quickly, but photo ID was required and Lisa had left hers in the hotel and none of the people at Registration personally knew her. There was nothing we immediately needed, so we stuck around in the free areas until I connected with Detcon 1 chair Tammy Coxen, who went by Reg and told them that Lisa was who she said she was and that this should be enough to give Lisa her badge. We're grateful to Tammy for her help.

( My rant about photo ID and convention memberships )

After a little while longer, it was time for lunch, and we headed back to a place we spotted earlier near our hotel.

( People Movers and Old Trains )

After lunch it was back over to Detcon for the first tranche of panels, which included an Old Time Radio demonstration, with old episodes of X Minus One and other SF/F related shows played over restored old tube-type radios. I enjoyed sitting for a short time in the dark with my eyes closed and listening to the shows. After that, we were on call to help decorate the Montreal in 2017 Worldcon bid party for tonight. Lisa and I had the one characteristic needed: we're both tall, which makes it much easier for us to hang the Canadian flag and the flags of the ten provinces and three territories around the room.

( What Beautiful Suites You Have Here )

After helping decorate the room, we left the rest of the set-up to the remainder of the Montreal bid committee present and instead went down to the Opening Ceremony.

( It's Officially a NASFIC )

After Opening Ceremonies, we needed to eat. A couple of restaurants in the Ren Center food court (which mostly cater to the lunch trade) agreed to keep longer hours for NASFIC, so we did our part to show that we appreciated this by getting sandwiches from Subway. Then it was back up to the Ambassador Ballroom for SF Jeopardy!. This had one of the J! game systems with remote controls, clickers, and score boards, but Lisa and I thought it could have used better production values like those we bring to Match Game SF. Also, the host of the show allowed himself to be taken out to dinner and kept out so long that the 10 PM start was substantially delayed, which didn't help attendance. Lisa and I left around 11 after the first round and went upstairs to check out the parties. I stopped by the Boston in Christmas 2020 Worldcon bid party, the New Orleans in 2018 Worldcon bid party, and the DC in 2017 Worldcon bid party before returning to the Montreal in 2017 Worldcon bid party I'd helped decorate four hours earlier. I never did get up to the 69th floor, even through the inter-floor stairs do work.

The next thing I knew, it was 1 AM and I'd been merrily discussing Worldcon, WSFS, the Hugo Awards, and sundry other matters for two hours. We called it a night and walked back to the Crowne Plaza. While not an actively dangerous walk, there was one homeless encampment, and I would recommend not traveling alone; however, Lisa and I walking together did not feel threatened on the well-lit streets of downtown Detroit.

Tomorrow we have few commitments again, although I probably need to spend time behind the San Jose in 2018 Worldcon bid table. (We're only doing a bid table, not a bid party.) Lisa may spend time helping with the Luna Society table as well. But we need to allow time to see the Art Show and Dealers Room, which from our initial glances at them look very attractive.

I've spent much of the past two days with very limited connectivity, mostly consisting of taking photos and posting them from my Twitter account (@KevinStandlee) when the phone could raise a signal. But this afternoon the train is in places that are close enough to cell phone towers that I could get my computer online again. I've put the photos I've taken so far in their own Flickr Album.

The train is running more than eight hours late, after a six-plus-hour late departure from Oakland, slow orders and maintenance along the line, and no real way to make up time. We'll be lucky to get to our hotel in Chicago (two blocks from Union Station) by midnight tonight. In a sense, I sort of wish I could have guaranteed that this would happen, because I could have then booked our trip to Detroit via Chicago as a continuous ticket with a Chicago connection. That would have cost the same number of points as the trip to Chicago alone rather than being a separate purchase. Then, when Amtrak failed to make the connection, they would (I hope) have put us up in a hotel for the night and sent us out on tomorrow morning's Wolverine to Detroit. (As it is, we bought a hotel night tonight in Chicago and purchased the Chicago-Detroit leg separately instead of using points.) However, you (a) can't guarantee a sufficiently late arrival to score the free hotel night and (b) there's always a chance Amtrak might have decided instead to put us on a bus to Detroit instead, and if there's one thing we can't stand, it's buying a train ticket to be put on a bus.

I worked until pretty late last night on Day Jobbe so that I could get things to where we could leave relatively early this afternoon. Because of some fretting on the SLC trip about maybe not having secured some things we should have secured (in fact, Lisa had done the things, but had forgotten it), we've developed a point-by-point checklist for securing Fernley House. If we do all of the things on the checklist before leaving, we can mostly not fret about having left the propane turned on in the trailer or something like that.

We headed to Reno first and had an early dinner at the Eldorado Buffet (just after they opened for the evening), then headed up and over The Hill and down CA-20 to Yuba City, where we checked in to the hotel. At Lisa's suggestion, we packed an extra one-night-only bag of things into which we'll change tomorrow and then leave some stuff behind in the van. This also includes things we won't need until we get back from Detroit.

( Recap: Why We're Going the Wrong Way )

We had a brief panic in Yuba City when Lisa thought she'd left all of her spare batteries for her white-noise-sounding radio at home. Fortunately, before we rushed back to Fernley (a 300 mile round trip), she found them, just not in the place where she would normally pack them.

I'm glad we're on the move. Planning is good, but there comes a time when you simply want to stop planning and start moving.

We've done the first of four scheduled BASFA Hugo Recommendation Discussion Nights, which also include our discussion of Detcon 1's YA Award and of the 2014 John W. Campbell Award. As is usual with these, the first night in particular generates a lot of variations on, "I'll have to research things and get back to you."

Night 2 of 4 planned is next Monday, and then we'll come back and do it again the first two Mondays of March. (I'll be at home the weeks in between and thus can't be at BASFA to ride herd on recommendations.)

Except for our YA recommendations, which have to be done sooner because the deadline is the end of this month, I'll be publishing the list of the club's recommendations for the Campbell, the 2014 Hugo Awards, and the 1939 Retro-Hugo Awards on hugo_recommend after we've finished all four nights. I'll post the club's YA recommendations sometimes late next week.