Sasquan now has 7000 members! pic.twitter.com/l5b8LXgUHN
— sasquansf (@sasquansf) April 13, 2015
Sasquan, the 2015 Worldcon, has released another membership update hard on the heels of the one reported here the other day.
The con now has 7,016 members, including 3,418 attending and 3,300 supporting.
The surge is mainly in supporting memberships, the minimum requirement to become eligible as a voter in 2017 site selection and to vote on the winners of the Hugo Awards.
This compares to the figures reported as of March 31 as shown:
| Sasquan Total Members | |
| 3/31/2015 | 5,466 |
| 4/12/2015 | 7,016 |
| Increase | 1,550 |
| Adult Attending Members | |
| 3/31/2015 | 3,240 |
| 4/12/2015 | 3,418 |
| Increase | 178 |
| Supporting Members | |
| 3/31/2015 | 1,948 |
| 4/12/2015 | 3,300 |
| Increase | 1,352 |
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
OMG!! That secret handshake of fandom is hysterical! Thank you for sharing, Glen.
And thank you for the info on the biz meeting, Kevin. I was already very sad at the thought of missing panels just to attend the business meeting, but now I see I don’t have to!!
For some reason I thought the increase in supporting memberships was fen, not SPs or RPs. I hope us regular people can show them that fandom is inclusive, not exclusive. That there are no cabals, just lots of friends getting together having a good time. There are people from *all* ends of the political and religious spectrum who mostly get along. But as with all groups, some people won’t like some others. That’s normal! They have so many crazy misconceptions about Worldcon.
I only discovered Worldcon in 2002 and have been to every US Worldcon since. I only know a handful of people and most people I’ve chatted with in consuites and in autographing lines are just like me!
Why are puppyfolk not fen, when they enjoy SFF too?
There are cabals though, ’tis human nature. And I’d know, being human and all.
You’re welcome, Ita. Fandom was a little different, then.
Ita: Thank you, but I’m confused. You say you were “very sad at the thought of missing panels just to attend the business meeting, but now [you] see [you] don’t have to!!” I don’t get it. I expect there will be general convention programming between 10 AM and 1 PM each day (that being the time generally blocked out, although in fact the meeting IMO doesn’t have to adjourn if it isn’t finished, although Programming will be furious at us if we don’t). Worldcon doesn’t suspend the rest of its programming just for the Business Meeting. Most years, less than 2% of the attending members participate. I really wish I had a better idea of who is actually going to be there, not just vague guesses, because this isn’t an item where you can turn members away if there’s no room, and if we exceed the booked room capacity (already we’ve moved up one room size), it’s going to be challenging to rearrange the rooms on the fly. Conversely, if we spend thousands of dollars of convention resources on larger space and only 200 people turn up, we’ve wasted the members money.
The claimed “windfall” from the added supporting memberships is really not nearly as much as people think it is — those $40 memberships aren’t “free money” as anyone who has actually run a Worldcon knows — and I’d hate to have to spend it all on renting/arranging larger space that we don’t actually need.
If I could, I’d poll the entire attending membership with the question “Do you expect to attend the WSFS Business Meeting?” But I then start fretting over dishonest answers submitted out of malice.
Kevin, I thought the business meeting lasted *all* day until business was done and I’d have to miss all the panels. Although… from your comment it looks like it might.
Why not poll the members? Email them a link to the poll. Yes, I’m sure quite a few people would purposely lie and say “yes”, and some would say they’d attend but discover a panel they *had* to attend (I can think of two author readings I absolutely would not miss), but it might give you an very rough idea of attendance.