Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

We got home shortly after 10 AM this morning. We sort of wanted Amtrak to run at least an hour late so we could have breakfast and not be rushed. We got our wish, more or less, as a series of small delays minus recovery time built into the schedule put us in to Reno at 9:09, 44 minutes late. We had our breakfast around 7 AM, shortly after Winnemucca, and after eating we started policing up our compartment so we were ready to move out when our train passed Sparks.

Aside from minor confusion about which floor on which I'd parked the minivan, it was no big deal to retrieve the vehicle. $75 to park for 15 days does seem like quite a bargain, especially comparing it to things like the valet parking at the Hyatt in Chicago. OTOH, we got an unpleasant surprise when we found that the air conditioning on the Astro is once again not working. I guess I'm going to have to take it back to the shop once again, probably tomorrow.

In theory there were errands we could have run in Reno, but Lisa and are both very tired, and so we went straight home. She fell into bed and I tackled more video editing of WSFS Business Meeting videos. The 2022 WSFS Business Meeting playlist now has all eight possible videos from the four meetings at Worldcon: the main camera and the "B-Roll" backup recordings that Lisa made because we were unsure whether the main camera would be able to record the entire meeting when we found out that we couldn't plug the camera into ground power.

There are lots of things about which I could write. I took hundreds of photos. Much of the trip I reported on my Twitter feed with photos from along the way. It was a pretty good trip. We appear to have escaped getting COVID, by dint of staying masked and not eating meals anywhere but in our hotel room. We got a good train trip, both ways. But I'm too tired to write much more about it. Tomorrow I get to sleep in, and Tuesday, I have to return to the Day Jobbe.

I kept meaning to use the bits of handheld video I shot as "inserts" in the Opening and Closing Ceremony videos we shot for Chicon 7, but I never got around to it, so I simply put together the master shots that Lisa did. For some reason, the embed code doesn't want to work, so here's a link to the Chicon 7 Opening Ceremony video and Chicon 7 Closing Ceremony video on YouTube.

Unfortunately, there was a glitch in recording, and thus we did not get the Riverwalk to Riverwalk video or the first part of LoneStarCon 3's presentation after Chicon 7 handed over to them.

Chicon Chairman Dave McCarty told Lisa and me that nobody was officially recording their closing ceremonies, and that we were welcome to do so if we wanted, and that the Chicon Events team would cooperate with us. Therefore, after going out to lunch with WSFS MPC Secretary Linda Deneroff, Lisa and I kitted back up for the last time in our Chicon jumpsuits and headed down to Columbus IJKL for the final event of the convention. We weren't in the Grand Ballroom because Chicon had already had to release the room in preparation for the event starting here tomorrow that was moving in as quickly as Chicon could release each room. This was the largest remaining function room after that, and it wasn't big enough, with every seat filled and the room filled beyond capacity, with people in the halls looking through the doors.

Dave McCarty thanked the Guests and presented an absolutely gigantic gavel to John Scalzi as the Mallet of Loving Correction. I got a photo of me and Scalzi with the gavel, but it's still on my camera and I'm much too tired to post it now and thus won't get to it until after I'm back in California because I'll be offline for the next four days.

And speaking of not posting stuff, while we have the Opening and Closing Ceremony videos, we just haven't had the chance to upload them, or even transfer them to anyone at Chicon on a memory stick, so y'all will just have to wait until we get back to the West Coast and have time to edit it all together and add titles and credits, after which I can upload it to YouTube.

Dave officially closed out the Worldcon and handed the (much smaller than Scalzi's) Gavel of WSFS over to LoneStarCon 3, who gave a brief and entertaining video presentation that had the point of view character walking out the front door of the Chicago Hyatt down to the Chicago Riverwalk and fading into San Antonio's Riverwalk. They also showed a promotional video from the San Antonio CVB. Alas, due to a glitch in the camera, it stopped recording during part of those presentations, and we're going to have to ask LSC3 if we can have the originals so we can edit them into whatever we finally make of the closing ceremonies.

And that was all for the official functions. Lisa and I changed back to street clothes and went for a walk down to Millennium Park and back, where along the way we ran into Stellan from Sweden — formerly a regular BASFA attendee, he had to return to Sweden after his work visa couldn't be renewed, but fortunately for him, unlike Cheryl, he's still able to visit the USA. We ended up going out to an early dinner with him before returning to the hotel.

Around 8 PM we went to the Con Suite where we participated in the traditional BASFA meeting in exile (where, as is not unusual, there probably were more regular BASFA members present than at the regular meeting back in California). I was auctioned off for my birthday (another tradition) to Lisa for $22. She says I have to play the train board game she brought with her on our train ride back west this week. Sounds like tough work to me.

The actual final event for us was the Former Worldcon Chairs Party, being held up in the wonderful suite that UK2014/Loncon 3 had been using. This was a fantastic complex of rooms for the Old Pharts Party — probably the best we've ever had. Despite the large number of people there, it wasn't crowded, and people could spread out and relax. And we could use the pool table! The suite has a pool table, but it was covered and used as a serving area by the parties earlier in the convention. Lisa and I broke the ice (and balls) by playing a game, and people continued to play throughout the evening. I didn't so much win my game against Roger Sims as he lost by fouling out on the 8 ball. Colin Harris and I also played a game. There were only two cues, and one of them broke a tip, and the other was pretty warped, but it was still fun.

Around Midnight, Lisa said it was time to go, and she was right, but before we left, she introduced me to Dave McCarty's wife, who I'd never met, and she came down one flight with us to our room to collect on Dave's behalf a CD-ROM of material that I was supposed to pass on to Dave for the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee but had forgotten to do. I'd write more about the conversation that followed, but I'm falling asleep at the keyboard and must get to bed soon. We don't have to get up maddeningly early, but we do need to do a lot of packing in the morning before meeting the Mansfields in the lobby at 12:30 to share a taxi over to Chicago Union Station for our respective trains going south (in our case) and north (in theirs).

From an organizational perspective, I found Chicon 7 to be one of the better Worldcons I've attended. I did hear some complaints about Programming in some aspects — heck, I made some myself — but since I attended none of the programming except one of the two items for which I was scheduled, I don't feel competent to evaluate it. Everything else about the convention was good, and I had a fun, albeit exhausting time. I'm ready to start heading home tomorrow.

After the WSFS Business Meeting was over, I checked with Program Ops to confirm that we still had the 10:30 Monday slot for Business Meeting so we could use it for the MPC Meeting instead. I sent a notice to the newsletter about the Monday MPC meeting. I also scratched myself from my 3 PM panel on the Worldcon Heritage Project because I needed food and sleep.

( Missed Another Art Show )

About 6:30 PM or so, I made my way down to the ballroom, set down next to Mike Glyer at a spare table, and set up my computer. Good thing, too, as its connection to the conference center wi-fi had expired and I had to go hunt up a copy of issue 1 of the Newsletter to restart it. I checked in with the door guards. Gary Feldbaum let me go on in, where I found my reserved seat in front of the Tech Nest. There I gingerly plugged in my 4-plug extension to one of the Tech Team's power strips and set up my computer.

( Covering the Hugos )

UStream failures notwithstanding, the Hugo Awards Ceremony itself was just fine. It went off smoothly, there were no obvious technical glitches, it lasted about the right amount of time, and everyone seem pleased. I'm generally happy with our CIL coverage as well. Cheryl kept things moving in the background, Mur gave descriptions of what was going on, and I posted the nominees and results as they happened. After the Awards ended, I left the room and started to set up to try and post the results on the Hugo Awards web site. (Unlike last year, I did not receive an embargoed copy of the results and thus was not able to do anything in advance.)

( Medical Interruption )

I didn't go to any parties tonight. I spent all of my time after I got back to the room posting the Hugo Results, and posting the Business Meeting videos that I'd uploaded earlier in the day.

( What About Lisa? )

Alas for not being able to sleep in on Monday, but at least we don't have to check out until Tuesday.

Saturday's Business Meeting was The Main Event: consideration of four WSFS constitutional amendments, all affecting the Hugo Awards.

Lisa and I were down to Columbus CD in plenty of time, but there turned out to be a panel in the room from 9 AM. Panels are supposed to be 75 minutes, although I expect most panelists are unaware of this. at 10:15 AM sharp, I and the rest of the waiting WSFS meeting people came in and the panelists in there scattered, some making very annoyed noises that "we have this room until 10:30!"

( Rant About Business Meeting Scheduling )

This evening, I set the Business Meeting videos to uploading before going out to the parties for a while. It took about two hours or so for them to upload, even over the in-room wired connection. (Thanks to the friend whose paid connection I'm sharing since it covers 3 IP addresses.)

Part 1: Best Fancast, Best Semiprozine/Fanzine, Best Graphic Story ratification debates/votes. philfoglio's speech urging re-ratification of Graphic Story is about 37 minutes into Part 1.

Part 2: Best Young Adult Book debate/vote

There is a short gap between the two parts where nothing substantive happened and the meeting took a brief recess.

( Summary of the Business Meeting Results )

With all substantive business now concluded, the only business remaining before the meeting Sunday morning is to formally receive the results of Worldcon Site Selection and to entertain Question Time for bids for future Worldcons. After that, we'll hold the traditional Worldcon Chairs Photo Opportunity, and after that, the Mark Protection Committee Meeting. The problem that I see is that the Business Meeting tends to bloat up to the time permitted, and the MPC Meeting doesn't really get the entire slot anyway because the Neil Gaiman play going on right after the BM needs time to set up, so we may have to scramble to find another place to move the MPC meeting. We can't just hold it out in the open because people will wander in assuming it's a random conversation rather than a (theoretically) directed meeting.

An attempt to move the WSFS Business Meeting from 10:30 AM to 10:00 AM was almost destined to be futile, in my opinion, but when the "pink sheet" program updates and the online program also said the meeting was at 10:30, the die was cast. WSFS Business Meeting chairman Don Eastlake ruled that most reasonable members of the convention should expect the meeting to begin at 10:30, so 10:30 it remained. The next two meetings will also start at 10:30 AM (Saturday and Sunday), both in Columbus CD.

Lisa got the tripod set up to record the meeting, not helped by the tech team moving the floor microphone around. It started on the head table, then moved to the floor, then out into the middle of the aisle, and in the end she had the choice of covering the head table with the camera or the floor microphone, but not both. In the end she mostly pointed the fixed camera at the floor microphone and shot other parts of the meeting with the handheld camera. If we're really lucky, we might someday get it all edited together.

Late this afternoon I took my computer down to the convention floor and uploaded the videos. To my dismay, after 90 minutes of uploads, YouTube rejected them. Then I realized the problem. While my personal YouTube account is cleared for longer videos, the Worldcon account is not. By then it was too late to try again; however, I've been able to hitch a ride on one of the people who bought wired access and have wired access in my room for the next few hours. I set the uploads going again while Lisa and I went out to dinner with Chris Carson, and much later in the evening after we came back from the parties, the uploads and processing were complete.

See this post for the videos, or go directly to YouTube:

Part 1

Part 2

The video is in two parts because our camera can't record more than about 45 minutes per file even if there is a larger memory stick in the camera. You don't have to change sticks, but you do have to stop and start the recording at least once every 45 minutes or it will shut itself off.

We would love to edit these two together and edit in the various hand-held close-ups, but decided it was more important to get the footage out there fast and deal with clean later.

( Summary of the Business Meeting )

Lisa and I were mildly annoyed that the meeting ran its full time slot because it takes time to take down the cameras, pack up the gear, work our way through the elevator queues, change out of our WSFS uniforms into Giants gear, and work our way back down to the street. We had tickets to the Giants game!

For us, the Wednesday before Chicon 7 started was a day to "sleep in" (i.e. get up at 8:30 instead of 6:30 AM) and get acclimated to Chicago. Since my 24 hours of internet access would expire this afternoon, I spent more time than usual online trying to get things done, but consequently we were relatively late getting moving, and we hadn’t even had breakfast.

( Rant About Registration )

Despite my exasperation with the person who mistook process as being a substitute for policy (which is like mistaking precision for accuracy), we did collect our membership materials, which we took back to our room because we planned on spending most of the day off-site.

After a stop at the front desk to deal with some bookkeeping matters like getting my Hyatt number added to the hotel information and asking them to clean the filthy air intake on the air conditioning in our room, we set out for breakfast. We ended up eating at the Corner Bakery down the street from the hotel, which is okay (there are no Corner Bakery stores on the west coast, and I do like their pecan-raisin bread). After that, we picked up a CTA Day Pass from the CVS/pharmacy and headed for the Loop to catch a train south toward the Field Museum.

( Hello, Sue )

Although we’d stopped for a snack mid-afternoon at the Corner Bakery inside the Field, we hadn’t actually had lunch (having had breakfast so late in the morning), and by the time we rolled out of the Field just before 5 PM, I was really starting to drag. We walked back over to the El and rode it back to the Loop, getting out on the far side away from the hotel and looking for something relatively fast and inexpensive. We ended up at Curries, a fast-food Indian restaurant. Lisa has been concentrating on protein (and eliminating dairy) in an attempt to deal with some digestion problems that appear to be dairy-oriented, so we got her a small dish of fairly mild tandoori chicken bites, while I had a real cultural mash-up of tandoori chicken mac, which is basically macaroni and cheese with chopped tandoori chicken. Person of low taste that I often am, I really liked it.

( More Rail Geekery )

Returning to our origin point at State/Lake, we trudged back to the hotel, stopping at the CVS to pick up some sugar-free cough syrup for me. I can feel the cough that started with Lisa building in my chest. I hope I don’t get it as bad as she had it, and I hope I don’t pass it to others while I’m here. We’re avoiding touching any of the party food and we’re using hand sanitizer liberally.

Back at the hotel, Lisa decompressed in the room for a few hours while I went in search of free internet and also checked out the room in which the Business Meeting will be held to confirm that there was a place where we can set up the camera. I also scoped out where the WSFS MPC Meeting will be on Thursday, which is the Wright Room on the Silver Floor of the West Tower, which is quite out of the way. I was happy to find a way to access that level by stairs (the stairs are to the left of the first entrance to DaddyO’s Irish Pub in the West Tower). Then it was back to the lobby to see if the promised free internet would work.

( Free and Slow, but not due to the Connection Speed )

While in the lobby, I learned from Linda Deneroff that there were parties on Night 0 on the 29th and 30th floors, so I went back to my room on the 33rd floor, put my computer away, and Lisa and I walked down (the stairwells open from the inside, thank goodness) to the Boston in (Christmas) 2020 Worldcon Bid Party (don’t try to think too hard about it) and the Kansas City in 2016 party. In keeping with our desire to avoid infecting more people, we limited ourselves to collecting bottles of water or soda.

We turned in before midnight and tried to wind down, and Lisa suggested I get my LJ entry composed while I was thinking about it. It takes longer than you might think to try and get this much stuff organized, which unfortunately cuts into my sleep for tomorrow. Although it’s only the first day of the convention, I’m going to be very busy, what with trying to find some time to sit at the Westercon 66 table, attend the opening ceremonies (where Lisa, Kuma, and I will be rolling out some brand new matching costumes), a panel I have at 4:30 PM, the MPC meeting at 6 PM, and the opening night event at the Adler Planetarium on Thursday evening. I’m getting tired just typing it.

I "slept in" until 8:30 AM this morning. Unless I order room service ($$$) on Friday-Sunday, I don't think I'll be able to laze about like that if I'm going to be at 10 AM business meetings, what with having to set up our recordings and all that.

With internet service at $13/day in the room, as I mentioned yesterday, I don't expect to pay for it every day I'm here. Whether I'll be able to upload videos of the Business Meetings while I'm here is rather doubtful, but we'll see what sort of other connections we'll have available to us around here. I might manage to make a low-resolution copy where you would at least have the sound if not very good pictures.

Today Lisa and I are going to the Field Museum, but we're going to try and not wear ourselves out. My pedometer says I walked 28K steps yesterday, although of course that's hugely overstated due to the train vibration. I'm pretty sure it was over 12K, though, given the walk over to Greektown and back for dinner. We won't be able to afford that much time off site for most of the time we're here, of course.

I'm not sure when I'll be back online again. Darn these high-end hotels and their overpriced services! Lisa says, and I agree, that we wanted the convenience of location (the convention hotel), but we'd rather be staying in an Holiday Inn Express -- included in-room internet, refrigerator, microwave oven, and breakfast.

As California Zephyr left Denver on Monday evening, we observed that the lower level lounge car was unoccupied, so the members of TrainCon moved down there for the scheduled 8 PM BASFA meeting. With everyone accounted for, BASFA Vice President Chris Garcia called things to order early. The meeting lasted only around twenty minutes but did cover the entire regular agenda. The meeting actually ended twenty-seven minutes before it was scheduled to start. You can blame it on time zones; indeed, meeting “Amtrak-6” ended before the regularly-scheduled meeting back in the Bay Area was scheduled to begin at 8 PM PDT.

TrainCon moved upstairs to our regular pair of booths across from each other. Some of us sat and talked, while others (including me) played card games and talked. But soon enough fatigue overcame us and Lisa and I returned to our bedroom, where Lisa made up the beds for our second night on the train. Sleeping was very difficult for Lisa because of her cough (which isn’t really getting much better), although I slept pretty well myself.

At a long stop at what I think must have been Lincoln NE, I awoke because of a blinking light reflecting into my eyes like a flickering neon sign in a cheap hotel. Peeking through the curtains, I saw a piece of BNSF railway maintenance equipment on the next track to ours with a rotating yellow warning light. I pulled the curtains more securely closed and returned to bed.

( Through the Fields to Chicago )

After lunch, it was time to begin the wind-down process and move most of our things back into our luggage downstairs in order to make the deboarding process easier. Lisa and I spent most of the rest of the trip in our bedroom with her reading, me composing LJ entries, and Bear watching the scenery go by. As we passed Aurora, and the EJ&E crossing, I waved in the direction of my company’s regional offices where I’ve worked numerous times and started shutting down in preparation for our arrival in Chicago.

The full announcement won't be up for a day or two, but it's now pretty certain that I'll be anchoring TheHugoAwards.org's text-based CoverItLive coverage of the 2012 Hugo Awards in Chicago. This is not the UStream video coverage, which Chicon 7 will be providing via the Worldcon1 UStream channel. CoverItLive is a text-based service, with some aspects of a chatroom, but with the coverage hosted and produced by me and others. CIL is nearly real-time (the UStream feed can fall several minutes behind, it appears) and isn't interrupted for advertising the way the UStream feed is. Also, if you don't have the bandwidth for streaming video, CIL is likely to work better for you. I think of CIL as the "radio" version of the coverage, as opposed to the "television" broadcast. Just like having baseball available on TV doesn't make the radio broadcast necessary, we've found that having both the lower-bandwidth CIL-cast as well as the high-bandwidth streaming video is a good way to maximize the number of people who get to "sit in" on the Hugo Awards Ceremony.

I'll post more once we have more the details pinned down and the pages posted on THA.org