The Business Meeting this morning was a resounding success for the forces of progress. We saved the Semiprozine category (despite some last-minute skullduggery); we ratified the “Making the Web Eligible” motion, which will hopefully put an end to all of the claims that online writing is not eligible for the Hugos; and we ratified with Graphic Story category, which will now be with us until at least 2012. Yay all round.
We finished a little early, and I was able to get out and have lunch, get my photo taken by Kyle Cassidy, vote in site selection and support the Texas in 2013 bid. The it was time for the Greatest Fanwriter Besides Me panel, which I will report on at length in ConReporter.com when I get the time. I have also taken a quick look around the art show and dealers’ room, both of which are sadly small and disappointing.
Now, however, I am back at the hotel getting changed and about to head off for a 5-6 hour stint working backstage at the Masquerade. If all goes well there will be live reporting from the event here.
Yay for saving the semipro zine. Will you be reporting on the nature of the skullduggery?
I tend to think that it was inadvertent skullduggery. During the Semiprozine debate, a member asked if he could introduce a resolution (not a constitutional amendment) calling on future Hugo Administrators to more aggressively enforce the “non-professional” clause in the existing Semiprozine definition. Based on WSFS rules, the Chair (me) told him yes, but only if the meeting suspended the rules to do so, and that it would go at the end of the agenda after all of the constitutional amendments.
After the Semiprozine debate ended, a significant number of people left as we expected, and debate commenced on the other constitutional amendments. Once those were resolved, the resolution was introduced — the meeting having voted by the necessary 2/3 to allow its introduction. Cheryl, speaking in opposition to it, pointed out that despite the non-binding nature of such resolutions, it was a “backdoor” way of changing the Semiprozine Hugo right after the meeting had overwhelmingly voted down changes to the category and established a committee to study the matter further, and that while technically legal, could certainly be considered breaking faith with those members who had left the meeting having been reassured that the remaining members were not going to use one of a number of parliamentary tricks to renew the issue this year.
I can’t get inside the heads of the members, of course, but I speculate that even people who might have been in favor of the general concept of the resolution were made uneasy by having this pointed out to them and consequently the meeting voted down the resolution.