Convention Reporter

Well, no one offered to do any convention coverage for us, and we’ve been too busy to chase them, so it looks like nothing will happen here this weekend. We will be putting out some information at SF Awards Watch, and Cheryl will be making the occasional post on her personal blog. Once we get to May we’ll look at winding up this website as there seems to be little interest in keeping it going.

It is April, and the Easter holiday is almost upon us. Traditionally this is a very busy weekend for conventions and awards. Cheryl and Kevin will be at Eastercon in Birmingham, England for Eastercon where the British Science Fiction Association’s annual awards are given out. This year’s Hugo Administrator, Vincent Docherty, will also be in attendance, and if all goes well the Hugo nominees will be announced at Eastercon as they were last year.

Meanwhile in Seattle, Norwescon will be taking place and the winner of this year’s Philip K. Dick Award will be announced. In Minneapolis, it’s time for Minicon 46. And in Perth, Australia this year’s Swancon is also the Australian Natcon and will therefore feature the Ditmar Awards as well as the Tin Ducks.

If you are going to be blogging or tweeting from any of these events, and would like us to syndicate your reports here, please contact us, providing the information that we need to add you to the site.

The last of our large videos shot at Aussiecon 4 was among the first we shot, that being Fan Guest of Honour Robin Johnson’s talk on Thursday afternoon. Because we were late getting set up and Robin started on time, our recording starts with the talk already in progress.

Aussiecon 4 Fan Guest of Honour Speech from Salon Futura on Vimeo.

Here’s the closing ceremonies at Aussiecon 4, including the handover to Renovation, next year’s Worldcon. Although we got the same camera position here as we did for the Hugo Awards Ceremony the previous night, we forgot to bring the external power adapter for the camera. (Our spot on the floor was one of the few places with access to a power outlet.) Unfortunately, the camera batteries gave out about two-thirds of the way through the ceremony, resulting in a glitch while we quickly changed batteries. We apologize to the A4 Newsletter team, whose well-deserved thanks by the Chairman was the victim of our battery-change time.

Aussiecon 4 Closing Ceremonies from Salon Futura on Vimeo.

As with the Opening Ceremonies, the video hosting is courtesy of Cheryl Morgan and Salon Futura/Wizards’ Tower Press, but the sloppy videography is all my fault.

Now that we’re back from our Australian holidays and back at an unmetered internet connection, we are working through the backlog of video we shot at Worldcon. Here’s the Aussiecon 4 Opening Ceremonies, joined in progress because we were late getting set up and started recording while the introductory video was still playing.

Aussiecon 4 Opening Ceremonies from Salon Futura on Vimeo.

This video is hosted on Cheryl’s Salon Futura/Wizards’ Tower Press Vimeo account because I’m out of capacity, but the sloppy videography is all mine.

At most recent Worldcons, there has been an organized photos session for those past, present, and future Worldcon chairs present at the convention. This year, we managed to corral all but two of the chairs who were at Aussiecon 4 just after Sunday’s WSFS Business Meeting.

Worldcon Chairs Photo Session 2010 from Kevin Standlee on Vimeo.

Video recordings of the Australian Awards Ceremony and of the Hugo Awards Ceremony at Aussiecon Four are now online.

Sunday’s Business Meeting received the results of the Site Selection voting. The newly-elected Chicon 7 committee, led by Dave McCarty, gave their initial presentation, announcing their guests and answering questions. After that, Patty Wells, chair of next year’s Worldcon, gave a short presentation and answered questions about Renovation. Bids for future years also made short statements: San Antonio in 2013, London in 2014, a newly-announced “exploratory committee” for Seattle in 2015, Kansas City, Missouri in 2016, Japan in 2017 (although the organizers are not firmly committing to a particular year yet), and finally the newly-announced New Zealand in 2020.

No additional substantive business happened at the meeting. The meeting received a report from the Worldcon Website Working Group (referred to the Mark Protection Committee), and the Business Meeting Chairman appointed members to various WSFS committees to serve for this following year. The meeting adjourned sine die (that is, for the final time at this Worldcon) just before 11 AM.

There will be no WSFS Business Meeting on Monday. The WSFS Mark Protection Committee will meet in the room and time scheduled for the Monday Business Meeting. (216, 10 AM) There are so few MPC members present at the convention that it is proving difficult to get a quorum of the 15-member Mark Protection Committee physically present in the same room at the same time, especially as many of the members of the MPC have responsibilities working on parts of the convention.

Medium-resolution video recordings of the Business Meetings will be available at whenever Vimeo finishes processing them. (The preliminary and main meeting recordings are currently showing as available as of this morning.) There are also UStream video recordings (of variable quality) of all three meetings.

The Main WSFS Business Meeting was on Saturday morning at Aussiecon 4. Approximately 50 people attended.

All six proposed constitutional amendment on the agenda received first passage (some in amended form) and will be forwarded to next year’s Worldcon, Renovation, for ratification.

The proposal to decouple the site selection voting fee from the initial attending membership price was replaced with a proposal to increase the amount that newly-seated Worldcons can charge to convert voting memberships to attending membership from the existing 2 times the voting fee to 4 times the voting fee.

The proposal to clarify the status of electronic voting on the Hugo Award and Site Selection was modified to permit e-voting on Site Selection only if the administering Worldcon and all bids on the ballot agree on the procedure.

The proposal to permit electronic distribution of rules was modified to require paper distribution on site, to require that any electronic distribution of publications by “opt-in” (members must positively agree to receive publications electronically), and that such distribution must be “push” (the Worldcon must contact its members, not simply post PRs on its web site without informing the members that they have done so.

The proposal to extend Hugo Award nominating eligibility to the members of the subsequent (as well as current and past) Worldcon passed without any changes.

The technical amendments to clarify certain cross-references regarding run-off voting and to include the Hugo Award logo and rocket designs in the list of service marks passed without any changes.

Kevin Standlee, Ben Yalow, and Tim Illingworth were elected to three-year terms on the WSFS Mark Protection Committee.

Sunday’s Business Meeting (1000 Room 216) will start with the announcement of the 2012 Worldcon Site Selection, followed by Question Time for Renovation and for bids for subsequent years. There will also be a report from the Worldcon Web Site Working Group. No substantive debate is expected at Sunday’s meeting.

Worldcon Chairs Photo

The traditional photo opportunity for past, present, and future Worldcon chairs will be at the conclusion of the Sunday Business Meeting, but no earlier than 1100, in Room 216.

WSFS Mark Protection Committee Meeting

The WSFS Mark Protection Committee, which manages the service marks and other intellectual property of WSFS, will meet on Sunday in Room 216 following the Business Meeting and the Worldcon Chairs Photo Session, but no earlier than 1115. This meeting is open to all WSFS members. The committee will elect officers for the coming year and will consider proposals submitted to it by the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee.

This report on the Preliminary Meeting appeared in this Friday afternoon’s Aussiecon 4 newsletter.

The Preliminary WSFS Business Meeting on Friday morning sent the four proposed substantive WSFS Constitutional Amendments on to Saturday’s Main Business Meeting; one of the four proposals was sent to a special committee that will prepare a revised version for consideration on Saturday. The meeting also received nominations for the WSFS Mark Protection Committee. For the first time in several years, there are more nominees than there are open seats on the MPC, and therefore there will be a contested election. Elections will take place at the beginning of the Main Meeting on Saturday.

The four substantive proposals coming up on Saturday are:

• Repeal the initial price cap on Worldcon memberships for site selection voters. This is potentially controversial, but did not generate any discussion at the Preliminary Meeting.
• Explicitly authorize Worldcons to conduct Hugo Award and Site Selection elections electronically: This has some controversy attached to it, and there will probably be a proposal to exclude Site Selection voting from this proposal, thus requiring that Site Selection continue to be conducted exclusively on paper ballots.
• Permit Worldcons to distribute their rules electronically: This was sent to a special committee for refinement, and a revised version will be put before Saturday’s meeting that clarifies whether e-publications are “opt-in” or “opt-out” and softening the requirements for publishing paper copies of the rules in advance of the convention.
• Allow members of the following (as well as the current and previous) Worldcons to nominate for the Hugo Awards: There was a chairman’s ruling on this that clarified that even if you’re a member of all three of these conventions, you only get one ballot.

There will also be two technical amendments clarifying some cross-references in the voting rules and adding the Hugo Award Logo and Trophy Rocket Design to the list of WSFS’s service marks.

The Business Meeting voted unanimously to renew the resolution extending Hugo Award eligibility for works originally published outside the USA and first published in the USA this year.

The Committee on the Semiprozine Hugo submitted a report that has no proposals for changes to the Constitution this year; the committee was continued for another year.

Other WSFS committees reported as listed in the Agenda document available on the Aussiecon 4 web site in the WSFS section; all of these committees were continued for another year. If you want to serve on a WSFS committee, contact Kent Bloom, Chairman of the Business Meeting.

The meeting also received financial reports from past and seated Worldcons.

Saturday morning’s Business Meeting will be at 1000 in Room 216. After the elections to the Mark Protection Committee, the meeting will take up first the technical and then the substantive constitutional amendments in the order they were proposed.

A low-resolution video recording of the PBM is available on Vimeo.