Cribbed from Tom Galloway & Co.’s fine daily newzine.
Attendance onsite is 4,740 which I think is a terrific draw for Spokane.
Total membership is 11,330. Isn’t that a record?
Art Show: Several main awards went to Andy VanOvergerghe
Masqyerade: Best in Show:(Presentation) Victorian Justice League,Barbara Hoffert, Mark Ezell, Ellie Ezell, Ann Ezell, Zachary Brant, Kathryn Brant.
More info in newzine issue which is probably online.
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How good is yhe number of attending members compared to previous worldcons?
Also, the Masquerade winners are online here: http://sasquan.org/masquerade/winners/
Photos (linked from above) here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/135602186@N03/
ETA: Hmm, the balloon/light group was at LonCon as well, in the Masquerade IIRC. Aren’t folks supposed to not just repeat costumes? ;-(
I’m guessing (hoping) “Don’t Blink” had a great presentation; the costumes look great, at least. Sorry I missed Worldcon, partially for things like the Masquerade!
Guess: How good is the number of attending members compared to previous worldcons?
You can see estimated Attending and (Supporting) Member totals for past Worldcons here. Sasquan has set a record for both.
Jj: Sasquan has not set a record for attending members. Only supporting and total members.
Frank Probst notes at MonsterHunterNation (yep – I read the puppies blog as well) that Helsinki winning on the first ballot is related to the increase in membership. He says it it an early indicator as to who the new members are and those that thought membership increases were not related to the location vote are wrong.
Thoughts?
SJW75261: I don’t feel a Helsinki win can be rationalized as a predictor of a Hugo outcome. DC made more effort not to discourage any GG or Puppy support that might come its way but that was far from approving either. Plenty of File 770 followers supportd DC as well.
SJW75261: Helsinki was always a very strong bid – they were only 35 first-preference votes behind Spokane in the site-selection voting for 2015. They’re a well-known bid who have been putting on excellent parties (*ahem* “meet and greets”) at cons for years. Moreover, Castalia House has no connection with Finnish fandom, apparently, though I was concerned that this years’ shenanigans would have a detrimental effect on the Helsinki bid just through non-knowledgable voters putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5.
On the other hand, I can concede that Probst is partially correct. I wasn’t a supporting member of Sasquan until Puppygate broke out, and yes, I did give Helsinki my first-preference vote.
I think his point was the many thought the growth were puppies on the March. I think Mike made the point that sometimes supporting members join more to vote for a location than for the hugo awards themselves.
I was skeptical about that but now Helsinki wins on the first vote. I accept that might be old time fans and not new fans if that’s what you guys think. I guess I was hopeful the increase was not related to galvanized puppy voters.
Are any of the panel discussions video taped.
I’m very glad to see Helsinki got it; I think it’s a useful reminder that Worldcon is Worldcon…
I’m one of thos touchy-feely SJWs the Puppies rant about.
I’m acquainted with quite a lot of SMOFs, some of whom would oppose or discount new foriegn bids such as Helsinki, preferring to rely on those with a proven track record. But most of the ones I’ve hung out with are/were still Fannish enough to go “Hey! Finnish!!” (or maybe “The previous DC cons were fine, but do I want another one so soon?”)
I think most of the fans I know have, for the past c. 30 years, pretty strongly favored Overseas (yes, that includes Canada, for us — and the two Canadian WorldCons I’ve been able to attend were quite marvelous).WoldCons, even when we couldn’t possibly afford to attend them, other things being equal. (Not that other things _are_ always equal, of course.) So Helsinki winning was was not the least bit surprising to me, or an indication of Puppies influence. .
I’m eagerly looking ahead at the Hugo Results… and expect to be pleased by them. (Well… insofar as Puppiedom is concerned. Not many Hugo results since I got into fandom (c. 1959) have entirely pleased me.)
As for the last point, we may have a better picture after tonight’s Hugo Awards ceremony.
The guy who does balloons has done costumes like that more than once before, but repeating the medium doesn’t mean it’s the same costume. This year was a very different design from last year’s.
Wouldn’t the Fannish vote have favored Helsanki (capital of Fanland?)
@Morris Keesan: My bad; it looked so familiar/similar, I thought the costume (not just the medium) was the same.
Where are the Puppy complaints that they were excluded from the Masquerade awards?
While thanks for the credit, it’s really wrong to describe the newsletter as being “Tom Galloway and Co’s”. Cherise Kelley is the overall area head and assembled the staff for it, and, due to the way we divided the work, my only contribution to the issue referenced was to let the folk for whom it was their first Worldcon know that people would want all the numbers from site selection, not just who won and the placements. To quote the credits from issue 7:
Sasq-Watch has been brought to you by:
Area Head: Cherise Kelley
Deputy Area Head: Tom Galloway
and in alphabetical order:
Heidi Garrett
Judith Herman
Bonnie Packert
Ruth Pitt
Cathy Thornbrugh
Kaye Thornbrugh
Kelly Thornbrugh
@Tom: I just discovered the newsletters online last night (thanks to a link or comment here, probably) – thanks to you and the whole crew for all the work on that. I always love the Worldcon daily rag. 😀 So, thanks for Sasq-Watch, y’all!
Yes, great work on the newsletter!
SJW75261: I was skeptical about that but now Helsinki wins on the first vote. I accept that might be old time fans and not new fans if that’s what you guys think. I guess I was hopeful the increase was not related to galvanized puppy voters.
All the Puppy whines I saw about Site Selection were directing Puppies to vote for DC in 2017 — presumably because that is the 1 of the 4 bidding locations the largest number of them would be able to attend and something something WSFS Business Meeting something. Quite a few of them were disgruntled to discover that they would have to shell out yet another $40 to vote on Site Selection, so I don’t think the uptake on those marching orders was particularly strong.
I don’t know that DC would have done them much good, anyway; E Pluribus Hugo passed this year and will likely be ratified next year, and it’s even harder to get something taken out of the WSFS Constitution than it is to get something put in.