Convention Reporter

The video of the 2009 Main WSFS Business Meeting held Saturday, August 8, at Anticipation is now online. If you have difficulty viewing the video through Vimeo’s online viewer, you can download the video (WMV format) to your machine using the link in the lower right corner of the video’s web page.

Vimeo limits users to uploading 500 MB/week, although once uploaded, the files stay up there and new files do not displace them. I plan to post the Site Selection Business Meeting next week.

The Main Business Meeting dealt with amendments to the WSFS Constitution pending ratification after having received initial passage at the 2008 Business Meeting in Denver. The Main Event was the debate over the removal of the Semiprozine Hugo Award. Also on the agenda: The Graphic Story Hugo Award and the explicit expansion of Hugo Award eligibility to electronic (web-based) publication.

This information is not secret. Feel free to pass it along to anyone else you think might be interested. You can quote this message entirely if you wish.

I have added lots more links to the Anticipation archive page today, including FluffCthulhu’s appearance on Canadian television and a report in Turkish. I still have a pile of Google Alert emails to wade through. I’m seriously impressed with how good the press coverage of this convention has been.

One of the panels I was on at Worldcon was intended to allow the Hugo-nominated fan writers to recommend other people whose abilities they admired. Chris Garcia, Steven H Silver, John Hertz and I were all there. Evelyn Leeper moderated, and Lenny Bailes joined us with some excellent suggestions. The full list of recommendations (based on emails from Chris and Lenny plus my notes from the panel) is below the fold.

Note that some of the people mentioned I did not have web links for. In other cases the people mentioned blog under a pseudonym. Even though I had links for some of them, I have not included that link if I could not get to the LJ in question by Googling the person’s name. If you are listed here and you don’t have a link, and want me to include one, please let me know.
Read more…

I have added a whole lot of links to the Worldcon archive page, including a lot of video. Hopefully now I can get on with writing my own con report.

The video of the 2009 Preliminary WSFS Business Meeting held Friday, August 7, at Anticipation is now online. If you have difficulty viewing the video through Vimeo’s online viewer, you can download the video (WMV format) to your machine using the link in the lower right corner of the video’s web page.

The Preliminary Business Meeting includes reports from WSFS committees, consideration of resolutions such as extensions of eligibility for the Hugo Awards, first consideration of new constitutional amendments (two were proposed; one morphed into a non-binding resolution and the other was killed by Objection to Consideration), and setting initial debate time limits for items to be discussed at the Main Business Meeting.

While the bare summary of what the PBM may sound boring, there were some parliamentary fireworks at Friday’s meeting. Indeed, from a meeting-watcher’s point of view, Friday’s PBM was probably more interesting than the Main Meeting on Saturday.

Due to Vimeo’s upload limitations, the Main Business Meeting will not be posted until next week. The reason the Business Meeting Videos are posted to Vimeo and not YouTube is that YouTube uploads are restricted to a maximum length of 10 minutes. Vimeo’s restriction for non-premium accounts is 500 MB/week.

We are still collecting coverage to post to our archive pages, but in the meantime here are two fabulous sets of photos:

• Kyle Cassidy’s fan photo shoot from the Saturday
• Charles Mohapel’s official Masquerade photos, Part I and Part II

Being stuck in Montreal airport for several hours, I have made a start on collecting people’s con reports, photos, videos and so on of the convention. They are all being posted to the Archive Page for Anticipation. If you know of anything I have missed (and I know there is a lot), let me know.

People are arriving home and uploading their cameras. Kyle Cassidy points us to a photo of him here and his photos of us are up there. Cheryl’s pics are all here too. You have seen many of them but here they are for you to oogle in one place. BTW, Cheryl has finally arrived safely in Boston. Her journey away from WorldCon has finally ended.
Lou Anders’s Photos of the World Science Fiction Convention 2009 is on facebook so you will only get to see these if you have an account there. However his blog write up is here and has a few photos there too.

Neil Gaiman pointed us to these photos including the tee shirt made of his blog post. And Karen Newton has uploaded all her shots.

I haven’t had a chance to go through them but it should be enough to keep the image hungry among us happy for now.

Alison Coad says practically nothing at all about Worldcon. Alma Alexander had a long trip home but before that she had this to say. Amy Sturgis notices a fun badge and survives the end of Worldcon. Christopher Garcia has a question about the Hugos if you feel up for a discussion. Frank Wu reviews his Worldcon.

Jenny has updated the promised pictorial guide here - with a link to her flickr album for higher resolution shots. Karen Burnham wraps up – the con that is..Kevin tours Montreal in his copious spare time. Matthew gives an attempt to sum up Anticipation. Claude Lalumière gives a last tour here. Tobias Buckell tells some stories about his visit – one of which was an ER visit!

Photos: from terilee07 , Rani Graff, John Picacio and Pyr Books.

Et voilà, c’est fini…Lionel Davoust.

PS – and Cheryl is still stuck in Montreal. Here’s hoping today sees her safely home.

There are a number of updates from people now that they have returned home. Cheryl however seems to be stuck in Montreal with the air transport refusing to let her leave – her flight managed to take off only to return to its starting point for the exercise to begin again. And I thought I had a full day.

However I am not up to chasing all the entries I have seen (Scalzi’s blog being a particularly good place to look for reviews right now, also Cory’s Boing Boing entry,) but I have seen some photos I had not seen before so I post the link here. They include Cheryl and Neil amongst others.

Actual service from me will return tomorrow ^(;,;)^

PS please comment here on what you thought of the coverage  - pros, cons, ideas etc…