Preliminary Business Meeting Report
This is my report on the Preliminary Meeting that appeared in this 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:
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.
There should eventually be a low-resolution video of the PBM once Vimeo gets around to processing it.
Update, 4 Sep 0700: Vimeo had unspecified difficulty with the file, but as of this morning in Melbourne, the video is now live.
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.
There should eventually be a low-resolution video of the PBM once Vimeo gets around to processing it.
Update, 4 Sep 0700: Vimeo had unspecified difficulty with the file, but as of this morning in Melbourne, the video is now live.