Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

The WSFS Mark Protection Committee (MPC) meetings at the start of a Worldcon these days are mostly pro forma as it's the last chance to correct anything in the report that we generally have finalized before the convention. This year was about the same. We did get one surprise, however, as MPC member Ruth Sachter said that because she hasn't had the time to participate in the MPC's tasks the way she'd like, she is resigning immediately rather than letting her term (which runs through next year) run out.

Because of Ruth's departure, there are now four vacant slots on the MPC. At Thursday's meeting, we will nominate people for the MPC. At Friday's meeting, we will elect four people using an instant-runoff preferential (Hugo-style) ballot. The first three people elected will fill the three-year slots running through 2014. The fourth place finisher will fill the one-year slot running through 2012; that seat will be up for election at next year's WSFS Business Meeting.

The MPC deferred most other action until the post-election meeting. As usual, that meeting will happen either about 20 minutes or so after the last WSFS Business Meeting (probably on Saturday, and thus probably no earlier than about 11:20 AM that morning) or, if there isn't enough time left in the 10 AM - 1 PM WSFS slot on Saturday, on Sunday at 11 AM.

I went to get my camera out of my bag when Lisa and I were in the Exhibit hall, and discovered that the trigger was missing. "I guess that's what must have been that little metal button I found in the bottom of the tote bag," I said.

"You didn't throw it away, did you?" said Lisa, horrified.

"No, its right here in the side pocket," I replied, and digging around in the bag I also found the spring that sits under the trigger. Unfortunately, there's no way to get the button to stay in place without taping it. Lisa taped it back in, and it works after a fashion, but it's never going to be the same again.

What a maroon I am: I $300 camera and I've broken a five-cent part that makes it work and probably can't be fixed. Groan. We'll limp along with what does work.

This evening being the last time Lisa and I are likely to get any farther off site than the Peppermill, we went over to John Ascuaga's Nugget for dinner at John's Oyster Bar, where (as usual) we had the shrimp pan roast. Alas, by driving off site, I lost the excellent parking space; Lisa and I had managed to get all three of our vehicles parked side-by-side-by-side.

Upon our return to the Atlantis, Lisa wanted to get dessert, so we went over to the Manhattan Deli, which was closed, but the coffee stand/dessert place next to it was open. I was off having a conversation with David Clark, Tom Galloway, and Mike Willmoth, and when I came back over, Lisa was chatting with another convention member. She said to me, "Hey, this is his first Worldcon!"

I sat and talked with him. It wasn't just his first Worldcon, it was his first SF convention of any sort. (Shades of my introduction to Fandom in 1984.) I asked him what attracted him to Worldcon. He said that he'd always been an avid SF/F reader, and he had been using things like "Hugo Award winner" as a sign of likely quality, and he learned that the Hugo Awards had something to do with Worldcon. As he was in the process of moving from the Bay Area to the Midwest, he thought this would be a good opportunity to attend, what with the Worldcon being so close.

I asked him how he found out about how the Hugo Awards work and how they're part of Worldcon, and he said, "At the Hugo Awards web site."

I was, I hope you can understand, well pleased. Anecdotes aren't data, but now I can say that I've personally spoken with one Worldcon member we probably wouldn't have had without TheHugoAwards.org.

Yesterday, Lisa and I walked over to the Convention Center on our way to the Office Depot that is down beyond the far south end of the center at the corner of Virginia Street and Kitzke Lane. (They didn't have the gadget we wanted. I'll miss having a Fry's Electronics nearby.) Among the many high-level Worldcon runners I saw there was Donald Eastlake, who has moved up to Business Meeting Chairman after Chairman-designate Kent Bloom (himself replacing, as I understand it, Tim Illingworth) had to cancel due to work issues. I told Don I was glad to see him as I wasn't sure who was going to preside if he didn't attend. (I would have been the sole remaining living past BM Chair of the past twenty years present, I think.)

Don asked if I wanted to be his deputy, but I had to decline. "Can't. I'm involved in debating too many of the things that are coming up this year." I did tell him, however, that if we get into the somewhat unlikely situation of going into Committee of the Whole on one of the issues on which I'm not planning to enter the debate, like the Semiprozine Committee report or the Best Fanzine/Best Podcast issue, that I'd be available to chair the CotW if necessary. As I said and Don agreed, this isn't very likely. We used CotW at the Nippon 2007 meeting (Don presiding) partially because the attendance at the meeting was small enough that handling a messy issue committee-fashion worked better, and we did it at the Westercon 64 Site Selection Business Meeting because it was mechanically the best solution to a parliamentary muddle, but it's not a mechanism that we commonly use at Business Meetings for Worldcon and Westercon.

I poked my head into room A2, where the Business Meeting will be. It's a big room. Almost too big for the size Business Meeting I expect, but there's a room-quanta issue. I'd rather have a too-large than too-small room. One challenge we face, though, is that the only power outlets are on the back wall (the other three are air walls with no services). That means a bit of fiddling about to get a camera position that will cover things properly and that also won't create a tripping hazard. We also might have to give up our plan for a two-camera shoot, but Lisa and I will go look at it again today to consider it. The room only has (as of yesterday) one microphone. It really needs two, one of which should be a floor microphone stand in front of the head table. The room is much too large for speakers to be heard without amplification. Even me.

Having been able to get to bed early last night, I found myself awake and not sleepy anymore at about 6:30 AM, so I decided to just go ahead and get up. Today is an unscheduled day for the most part, which is good because we have to change rooms later today and because Lisa (who is still asleep as I compose this) really needs to try and catch up some rest after the harrowing last few weeks and the long drive from Oregon and the stress of yesterday.

I got up much too early for my taste this morning and managed to get on the road just before 6 AM. Traffic was as light as one could ever hope for on a Sunday morning, and I somehow managed to breeze my way up to Reno in a mere 4 1/2 hours, which I consider quite amazing. The hotel had a room for me already, and told me that I won't have to change rooms on Tuesday even though I have two separate back-to-back reservations, although I'll have to go down that day and check out/check in and recode the room keys.

As I was moving a load of my stuff in from the car, I heard my name being paged to return to the front desk. When I got there, I found that Lisa had arrived earlier this morning and was waiting for me. We were going to move her stuff from her van, but she noticed that I was very much in need of a meal, so we went to the Atlantis' Manhattan Deli. We both had the matzoh ball soup, which was okay, but pretty meh compared to the nice place in Toronto near the convention center at Torcon 3. No matter how hungry I was, I shouldn't have ordered a full bowl of soup and a full-sized salami sandwich, and Lisa's stomach was complaining from over-eating after the plate of salmon and mini-bagels on top of the soup. Portion sized are quite large: be warned!

We then moved Lisa's things into the room, and she settled in for a nap, which she needed because she'd driven all night, not having been able to sleep. I can't blame her. I then went over to the storage locker (which is so close that I really could have just walked over there; I'd forgotten how close it was to the Atlantis) and got her electric ice chest out of storage so we can have a mini-fridge in the room once she wakes up and connects it. (I'm not sure how the wiring works on it since it's designed for use in vehicles, not on house current, and I don't want to mess anything up.

Once I finish unpacking, I'm thinking of taking a nap myself. I'm very tired, with much less excuse than Lisa. But now we're in and everything seems okay. Tomorrow will be another very early day because we have to be in Fernley before 8 AM to meet the house inspector, which means leaving here before 7, which for me means being up before 6. Expect me to be offline much of tomorrow.

There's not much else I can do before I leave tomorrow morning. I can't put anything else in the van because the remaining bags and boxes are waiting for things I can't put in until tomorrow morning.

I've made complete clone backups of both my personal computer (which I'm taking with me) and my work computer (which I'm not, but I'm taking the clone and the connector cable in case there happens to be something on that drive that I need). I'm leaving one clone of my personal machine in the fire safe and taking the other one with me. There's even a spare Dell D600 laptop in the bottom of the box of computer stuff in case my main machine fails on me. I know that even this isn't enough because after Denvention 3, both backup drives failed somehow, but this is all I can think of doing without trying to carry my entire apartment with me.

Lisa called this afternoon while I was running errands to tell me that she was pulling out of Mehama with the little pickup in tow. I should try to get to bed early so I can get started very early tomorrow morning up to Reno.

Thus begins the two-week adventure of Worldcon + House Moving. I sort of wish I was leaving now but it wouldn't do a whole lot of good to leave tonight other than to spend another hotel night and this trip is going to be expensive enough as it is.

The Friday Main Business Meeting's agenda will look like this, roughly. Remember that the Preliminary BM will have set debate time limits on each item, and it may reorder the agenda or (not likely) set "not before" orders on any specific item.

( Friday Main Business Meeting )

So unless people can convince the PBM to write in "not before" scheduling for specific items, it's going to be pretty difficult to say "Be there at 10 AM for ten minutes, then you can go away until 11:00, then come back again at 12:30." However, if we get close to 1 PM and aren't done, the meeting will probably adjourn and punt the remainder of the agenda to Saturday's meeting.

I think I've done everything I can for Match Game SF. There's a chance that some of the questions may overlap Westercon, because I can't remember exactly where we left off in San José, but the overlap, if it's there, is only one game. The prize packages are set up, and the announcer material is printed. The only problem is that we still don't have an announcer! I'm still trying to figure out how we're going to manage that one.

Such internet connectivity as exists in the Reno-Sparks Convention Center is apt to be sufficiently low-bandwidth that trying to provide streaming-video coverage of the WSFS Business Meeting is unlikely. (I'd like to do it, but I've been asked to not hog the bandwidth that streaming video requires.) I'm also likely to be too busy participating in the meeting to Tweet or do CoverItLive coverage. Lisa and I will be recording the meeting (unless we're squashed, which is always possible). If there's enough bandwidth to do so from my hotel connection, I'm thinking of uploading a low-resolution version of the "raw" master shot — the unedited shot of the head table, which would at least have the audio — each day as soon as possible after the meeting. Doing anything more than that requires editing time and bandwidth that I won't have.

The traditional gathering of Worldcon Chairs for a group photo will be after the Saturday WSFS Business Meeting, shortly after adjournment of the Site Selection Business Meeting or at 11 AM, whichever is later. If you're a former or current Worldcon chair and aren't already going to be at the Business Meeting, please come to Convention Center Room A2 before 11 AM on Saturday morning of Renovation for the photo opportunity.

As has been recent practice, there will be an opportunity for both still and video recording, with the Chairs asked to say their names and which convention they chaired. For an example, see the video of last year's session.

Please spread the word to any Worldcon chairs who you know will be at the convention but who are not on the SMOFS list.