[WorldCon] WSFS Main Business Meeting #1 Summary 2

Summary and highlights of today’s liveblog of the main business meeting, for those who prefer their business meetings to be low-sodium and use only fake sugar.

Just remember, unlike Aaron Burr, everyone is welcome in the room where it happens.

NOTE: I will be referring to all amendments by their working titles. If you want to know the substance of these, refer to the WSFS agenda linked to from this page. Or I have my quick and dirty readings of them here, with some helpful clarifications provided by people in the comments.

  • Committee reports were given for Nitpicking and Flyspecking Committee, WorldCon Runners Guide Editorial Committee, YA Award Committee, and Best Series Hugo Committee. I’m not going to summarize the reports here, you can find them all in the agenda. But I would particularly encourage you to read the YA Award report, which starts on page 37 of the pdf.
  • Financial reports accepted for previous WorldCons. ChiCon 7 is finally done, they have left the building, buh-bye!
  • Business passed on from previous WorldCons, excepting the items definitely postponed until Sunday (EPH, 4 and 6)
    • Best Fancast is re-ratified as a category, so it’s here to stay!
    • The Five Percent Solution passes and goes into the constitution, so yay no more 5% threshold for short story! (One argument for this measure provided by actual statistician Mr Quinn.) There was a minor change made to the language of this amendment that removed a section that didn’t actually have anything to do with nominating thresholds and got put in by mistake, giving us all a lesson on the dangers of global find and replace.
    • Nominee Diversity is referred temporarily to committee, to be reported back tomorrow. The committee will address some questions about how it should be dealt with if someone gets more than two nominations in a category and has to withdraw the extra works from consideration.
    • Electronic Signature passes.
  • There was a major parliamentary kerfuffle about if it would be possible to pass something this year and then delay the ratification an additional year (so it would be set to be ratified in 2018 rather than 2017). That got referred to committee as well, because a nitpicker and flyspecker’s work is never done.
  • New business for this WorldCon:
    • The committee’s modified language for Best Series was accepted. A sunset clause was added, set to expire in 2021. Best Series then gets first passage and will be up for ratification in Helsinki.
    • December Is Good Enough receives first passage and will be up for ratification in Helsinki.
    • Unanimous consent given to take up Defining North America since it was likely to be a less contentious item and we were running short on time. The measure then received first passage and will be up for ratification in Helsinki.

We got a lot done, as you can see! Tomorrow we’ll be going through site selection, and then more of the new business.

Previous days:

Preliminary meeting liveblog | summary

2 thoughts on “[WorldCon] WSFS Main Business Meeting #1 Summary

  1. Pingback: [WorldCon] WSFS Main Business Meeting #2 Summary ← Rachael Acks: Sound and Nerdery

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