The second session of the 2025 WSFS Business Meeting starts in 24 hours’ time, at 9 am PST, and will discuss (in Executive Session) the report of the Investigation Committee into the 2023 Hugos, of which I was a member, and various other rules changes and proposed new constitutional amendments. The first session was held on 3 July. You can find File 770‘s write-up here. I think it was a success. You can watch it here.
I spoke three times, at 1:19:50, 1:41:30 and 2:26:35; the vote went my way on the first two items that I spoke on, and the third, which I opposed, was referred to a committee, which is not a bad hit rate. (At least by my standards.)
I felt that it gained a great deal by being online and asynchronous with the convention. The most obvious gain was in numbers – 160 or so participants were present, which is more than normally show up for the in-person business meeting at WorldCon. The crucial vote on whether the meeting itself was in order and quorate under the rules was passed by 102 to 46. That was the highest participation in a vote all evening; the lowest was on C2 where 114 voted (though all other votes had over 120 participants).
By contrast, in Glasgow the two elections held at the 2024 Business Meeting attracted 89 and 88 votes, and the four counted votes ranged from 55 to 88 participants. In Chicago in 2022, the election for the Mark Protection Committee attracted 90 votes, and the serpentine counts ranged from 55 to 91. The highest counted vote in Chengdu in 2023 was 32, and the second highest 21, though my personal impression was that there were a lot more people than that in the room (despite complaints about its location). So the 3 July session had a lot more participants than the two previous Business Meetings combined.
One of the arguments that was made in favour of the online meeting was that it would boost participation from those who are unable to attend the in-person meetings due to other commitments, notably, running the actual convention. I think on pure numbers, the online Business Meeting proved its case on 3 July. I am not so sure if we brought in new speakers; there were indeed some new voices, but there were plenty of old ones (including my own), and in particular I’d like to hear more from the actual Worldcon runners. Perhaps tomorrow’s agenda will be more fruitful in that regard.
(The highest number of counted votes at a Business Meeting that I can quickly find was the vote to introduce E Pluribus Hugo in 2015, in the urgency of the Puppy crisis, where there were 186 in favour and 62 against, a total of 248 and a margin of exactly three to one. I hope we won’t see such dire circumstances again. Of course in many cases, votes at an in-person meeting are decided by a show of hands, and the fact that we take a 30-60 second interval to count votes in the on-line meeting does slow things down; but it also ensures that everyone’s vote is counted.)
The online aspect doesn’t take out all of the tedium – we really did not need to spend 25 minutes debating which bits of C.2 needed to be passed, and the fact that the meeting’s lowest participation vote came at the end of that is probably significant, but the great thing about watching in front of your computer is that you can go and get yourself a drink or a snack while waiting for that bit to be over.
There is much discussion about the way forward. Some object that this year’s meeting is not being held according to the rules, though that argument is surely over now, especially since future Business Meetings will presumably accept the decisions made this year. A nightmare proposal is that there could be a hybrid meeting. I am firmly opposed to that; I think you either have to go one way or the other. Counting votes cast both virtually and in person, and managing debate between online and in-person participants, will be brutal. We’ll see what happens in the remaining three on-line meetings this year, but I’m hopeful that the fully virtual process will successfully prove that it can (and perhaps even should) be done this way in future.
Meanwhile my own personal guide to the agenda remains available for consultation here:
