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[WorldCon] WSFS Business Meeting #2 Liveblog

AND WE ARE LIVE. I have tea. You can all stop worrying about me now.

Same rules as usual apply. I am sorry in advance if I misspell or don’t catch a name. Newer stuff at the bottom, I’ll update about every five-ish minutes.

1002: The business meeting will be in order! Many thanks and introductions. We’re starting with site selection today.

1004: 2018 site selection question time will be dispensed with so we can move on to the agenda after that’s done. 2017’s time is constitutionally protected, but there is unanimous consent to skip over that too.

1006: And here comes the report! 1,321 valid votes. New Orleans had 594. San Jose got the other votes (didn’t catch the number). So it’s San Jose in 2018!

1007: Motion to thank the tellers, finalize the results, and destroy the ballots. Unanimous consent.

1009: Kevin Roach who has amazing hair holy crap. Thanks the New Orleans bid committee for a wonderful and friendly campaign. Many people in the New Orleans campaign will be involved in San Jose. Their website is worldcon76.org. If you find any typos and come tell them about it, they will give you a new t-shirt.

1012: Information about guests, etc. Refer to the website if you want the deets. It should be going live very soon.

1015: Note, if you want paper publications for WorldCon 76, you will need to opt-in, but it will not cost extra.

1017: Mr Lee recognized for run-down of 2017 NASFic Results. 425 votes total, San Juan wins the bid!

1019: Mr Vasquez with the presentation for San Juan. Starting with a hearty, “Buenas dias, familia!” He gets a buenas dias back. Oh I am excited about this bid! This is going to be great.

1024: PLANTAINS AND RUM god I already wanted to go, now I MUST.

1025: NATIONAL PARK RAINFOREST.

1026: This will be the first major fan-run convention in San Juan. Oh my gosh.

1027: Mr McCarty comes up to say ChiCon 7 set aside $1000 for the winner of the NASFiC bid.

1027: Gary Blog asks if there will be room parties or fan village for 2017 NASFiC and 2018 San Jose. Answer is that both will have room parties.

1028: Mr Kovalcik asks when hotel reservations will be open for NASFiC — in the next few months. Charging extra for paper publications by mail? No.

1032: DetCon passes on $6000 to San Juan!

1033: Mark Protection Committee report. The registration of “Hugo Award” in the EU has now been completed.

1037: 2 minute recess.

1040: Back to order. Report from the Nitpicking and Flyspecking Committee.

1041: Mr Illingworth reports that both the major change and sunrise/sunset clauses are feasible. Question of if the sunrise/sunset is preferred. Motion is made and seconded.

1045: But this resolution wouldn’t be binding. But we pass it anyway.

1046: Committee on Nominee Diversity report. The report will come out of the 8 minutes of debate time. Dr Adams reports. They have modified the language to a lesser change that will put the amendment more in line with the original intent.

1053: The Chair rules that this is a lesser. Kate Secor appeals the ruling.

1054: Kevin Standlee suggests that the procedure for dealing with an appeal be reviewed, because it’s different from everything else we do. Let’s go down the parliamentary rabbit hole. Process: Chair gives an opening statement. Everyone else can speak for or against, but only once. Then Chair gets to give a closing statement. Then the floor gets to vote if we think the ruling is correct by majority.

1057: Debate time is running out, proposal to add 4 minutes evenly divided. Approved by 2/3 vote.

1102: Proposal to walk the mic around to those with accessibility issues. It failed.

1103: Now we’re going back and forth on the ruling.

1109: Ben Yalow points out that under current practice, we do not notify someone that if they withdrew their work, another of their works would pop on. Until they withdraw one, they don’t know.

1111: The question is called and seconded so we can get out of this. Motion is made to close debate other than 30 seconds for the Chair to make a closing statement.

1113: Now we are voting on the ruling. The ayes have it, the chair’s ruling is sustained.

1114: Ms McNeil motions to extend debate by 4 minutes, equally divided. Debate is not extended.

1115: Question is called. We will now vote on the amended language. Maybe. Maybe not.

1116: Jason Spitzer has objections/questions. Proposes rewording it again and sending it back to committee.

1117: Mr Eastlake says that if it’s not clear, it’s up for the administrators to decide from year to year.

1119: Voting on amendment from the committee now. The amendment passes. Language is accepted. AT LAST.

1119: Back to the underlying motion (Nominee Diversity). We have 15 seconds of debate left for and three minutes thirty seconds debate left against.

1121: Discussion of if finalists would be told how many nominations each of their works has. Dr Adams says that this came up in committee and a finalist could just say “please pick the two with the greatest number of nominations.” Mr Eastlake points out that this is the equivalent of the author not withdrawing anything at all.

1123: Try to call the question, but Ben Yalow points out that there has been no actual debate on the amendment. Kevin Standlee motions that we erase all debate times and give one minute to each side, to be limited to one person.

1124: Mr Eastlake as author of the amendment, for: “This is a great constitutional amendment. It does wonderful things… and boy golly everyone should vote in favor of it.” Oh, we needed this, Don. I’m afraid I didn’t catch the name of the person against.

1126: Mr Kronengold moves to amend by adding a sunrise and sunset clause. The amendment fails.

1126: “I’d now like to vote on the underlying motion. I’d really like to do that now.”

1127: The motion is passed. Nominee Diversity is ratified. We are taking a five minute break. I hope someone gives the chair a chocolate bar and a hug.

1140: The meeting is now back in order — for what purposes does the member rise? Proposal to move the YA Award up in discussion. Do we really need to debate this? NO.

1141: Ayes have it. B.2.3 then B.2.11. We will address Two Years Are Good Enough now.

1142: Warren Buff for. The number of new nominators gained from the work of tracking the N+1 memberships is relatively small, but requires a ton of administrative overhead. It’s a recent innovation that we’ve found to be impractical from an administrative standpoint.

1143: No debate against. Question is called.

1144: The ayes have it, Two Years Are Good Enough will be sent on to WorldCon 75.

1144: Now we are on to the YA Award.

1144: Katie Rask for the YA Award. The YA committee was voted in again for next year to discuss some of the remaining issues. The work this year was to addressing the feasibility of the award. Did not want to put award administration specifics into the constitution because that is not normal practice. There is a three year sunset clause for after ratification. The first provision for the insertion of the amendment provides that the naming of the award will not be considered a major change for the purposes of ratification. Next year’s committee will address the naming issue.

1147: Kate Secor, speech against. Not actually against the idea of a YA award. But objects to the specific proposal. Thinks it’s bad for YA. Creating a non-Hugo YA award would ghettoizing YA. There are a lot of authors to whom winning a Hugo-branded Hugo is very important to them.

1148: David Peterson for. They have spoken to a number of YA authors, including ones who are here. All of those authors have had the same opinion–it would be great if there was a Hugo award, but understanding the feelings of those who vote to put the Hugos on, a Campbell-like award is not a bad alternative. We have heard your objections to YA, with the Hugo being voted down again and again and again, so this is the best alternative that addresses it.

1150: Colin Harris is in favor of this proposal. Against it this year, but for one simple reason because the name is left blank. Administration is not finalized. If we pass this now, we’re going to put something into the constitution that will require major modifications next year. Against is just for that purpose.

1151: Mike Stern proposes an amendment to make it the Gernsback award. Not seconded.

1152: Chris Barkley in favor of the award. Thanks the committee members and the loyal opposition. Urges people to please vote for this, even in an incomplete form, it is the best way forward.

1153: Dr Adams says awards are currently under attack and this is not a good time to be adding a new one. (So where was this argument against Best Series?)

1154: Warren Buff asks that as we did yesterday with Best Series, let’s use the YA Award to bring the awards closer to the state of the industry.

1155: Mark Olson, parliamentary inquiry. The part that would affect the business meeting next year isn’t in the constitution and thus cannot dictate for the next business meeting. Speech against is now that, like Colin, he believes this is half baked.

1156: Cat Faber for, if there’s a major change, it’ll be a major change. If we kill the amendment and bring it back next year, it’s still going to take three years.

1157: Rene Walling would rather have a fully-baked solution.

1157: Kevin Standlee, last 20 second speech in favor. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” If we don’t move ahead now, we may never move forward.

1158: Seth Breidbart moves to add a sunrise clause to go with the sunset.

1159: Mr Kronengold has speech against the sunrise clause. A sunrise clause is useless here. If we make a major change, it’s delayed anyway. (Yep.)

1201: Question is called — one year sunrise clause amendment. Amendment fails.

1201: Question is called on underlying motion. Ayes have it over objections, we are voting on the YA Award. The Ayes have it on the motion BY A LOT! YA AWARD IS PASSED ON TO HELSINKI!

1204: Next business: Three Stage Voting. Colin Harris speaks for. Points out that the reputation of the Hugos is on the line; methods like EPH will make sure there are a couple good finalists, but does having a couple good ones in a field of puppies really save the awards from damage? Asking that we pass this now, so that it is poised for ratification next year if needed. This is not about looking for edge cases, “oh I don’t like Dr Who.” This is about the committee as a whole standing up and saying “we don’t want this.” (Similar to the mass No Award of last year.) Understands that 3SV looks rather bad, but running it as a ranked Semi-final would be unrealistic and too much of a burden on both readers and administrators. Historically people wouldn’t put things under No Award because it wasn’t their taste. They’d just not rank them. No Award has been used when something is really not deserving, as was used last year. The intent of the makers is that nominators should vote yes on anything in 3SV unless the work shows up due to an abuse of process and is something they would be absolutely No Awarding in the future.

1207: (Colin, you may have argued me around again, you silver-tongued bastard.)

1208: Kate Paulk points out that this is a vote of all the membership. Since some of the membership are highly committed to playing the slate. So how does this prevent a group from taking membership and knocking out worthy candidates? Where are all the massive numbers of voters that we should have that would dilute the effect of a dedicated group.

1210: McCarty, 3SV does something unintended that does a great good. This crowd-sources eligibility assessment in a way that doesn’t damage the Hugo reputation.

1211: Mr Rosen proposes to amend this to keep the accept/reject voting, but rejected entries are not removed from the finalists, but the ballot is lengthened to keep through the 5th non-rejected entry and keep the rejected ones down to that number on there too. Motion is seconded.

1216: I ask if in this extended list, the rejected items would be marked. The answer is no. So the finalist list would just be unusually long and we wouldn’t know if it was because of ties or whatever.

1217: We’re trying to get the text up on the screen so we can all see what we’re debating, as the chair feels we should know what we’re talking about before we get a speech against. “The hell you say!”

1218: Mr Eastlake moves to refer to committee. He feels this is too complicated to get through today. The motion is referred to committee. Three Stage Voting will now be addressed tomorrow.

1220: We are now moving on to the three Retrospective Improvement items. Motion to reorder the items so that we start with item 3 first and then move to 1 and 2.

1222: Mr Eastlake for item number three. This would add a note for the retrospective Hugos that they are retrospective and when they were awarded.

1222: Motion to make this a resolution rather than an amendment because it’s specific instructions about administration. Do we need to debate? “NO. Good.” Motion fails.

1223: Me: We haven’t had a serpentine yet today. Immediate calls for division on that motion. But before we do the serpentine, Kevin Standlee calls for a vote for division, which requires 20%. It fails. Kevin, you beautiful killjoy.

1224: Retrospective Improvement #3 passes. On to #1.

1225: Mr Eastlake says that this cleans up the language. Also allows awarding of Hugos for during the WWII years.

1225: Speech against, because who read what was good in WWII? Most of the people who were reading during that year are dead.

1226: Speech for, “I found the retrospective Hugos this year to be much easier to nominate for than the regular Hugos this year.”

1227: Stacy Helton against, this removes the restriction so we could go back 200, 500, whatever years.

1228: For: The Hugos exist as a larger cultural heritage, so it doesn’t matter if there’s a writer alive to appreciate the award.

1229: Mark Richards against. He doesn’t want to see the retrospective Hugos entrenched forever. Right now, once we get through 75 and 100 year cycles, they’re done.

1230: Voting on motion. Ayes have it for Retrospective Improvement #1.

1230: Time for part 2. Mr Eastlake for this one. More controversial, but hey we have a small debate time! This adds the concept of a category Hugo rather than a year Hugo. If in the previous year No Award was given in a particular category, if the WorldCon believes there was something peculiar in that particular year, they may decide to run a category retrospective Hugo. (Oh Don, this is fabulous.)

1232: Don clarifies that nominations would be completely open.

1233: Ben Yalow believes that this motion is completely inappropriate. We do not judge the decisions made by the voters under any circumstances. No Award is listed just like any other candidate, and if the votes choose No Award, we should not second guess them.

1234: Priscilla Olson, in 24 years we can rerun Sasquan, this would be so cool. We’re all gonna be around in 25 years to do this.

1235: Elspeth Kovar against; no award means that category has been voted on, it cannot be voted on against.

1235: Kevin Standlee against; this is a fatally flawed proposal for administrative purposes. It would be impossible to recreate the rules used in that year.

1236: Mr Quinn against; this is a good idea, but it’s not the time to do this.

1236: We are out of time. Mr Kronengold moves to change 25 to 50 years. No second, so we’re voting.

1237: Question is called. Retrospective Improvements #2 fails.

1238: Two minute videography recess.

1239: Meeting is back to order. For the record, we will have coffee tomorrow. CHEERING ALL AROUND!

1239: We will now be considering Universal Suffrage.

1240: Ron Oakes speaking for. As he went through the constitution, he discovered that there was nothing in there to prevent a future WorldCon from violating all tradition and creating a membership class with no rights.

1241: Mr Walling against. The economics of the matter would force the committees to not create such a membership.

1241: Ms Olson is concerned the word sell because she knows this WorldCon gave away many free memberships that did include voting rights. Motion to change the word sell to provide.

1245: Elspeth Kovar, we’re not selling, we’re providing. Provide is a simple, one-word change that will clarify what is going on.

1246: Lenore Jones against, points out that the current motion doesn’t say anything about free memberships to people such as the CART operator and ASL interpretor. The amendment would force us to offer voting memberships to them.

1250: Motion fails to change sell to provide.

1252: A few more speeches for and against, my apologies that my attention is wandering a bit, because I need to zoom to a panel really soon.

1253: Universal Suffrage passes and will go on to Helsinki.

1253: We’re going to do one more item, but I can only give it two more minutes.

1254: Ben Yalow would asks that we put this off to tomorrow because he has something he needs to go to at 1300. Motion to adjourn.

1254: There is an objection. We vote. Adjourning fails. Argh.

1255: Sorry guys, I have to go. :( Not going to be able to cover the last bit.

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