2020 WSFS Business Meeting Video Online

The Worldcon Events channel has dropped a video of the 2020 WSFS Business Meeting at CoNZealand, the 78th World Science Fiction Convention, held on August 1.

A five-and-a-half minute Business Meeting! You haven’t seen anything move this fast since the Russian Ballet in Bye Bye Birdie.

[Thanks to Kevin Standlee for the story.]

8 thoughts on “2020 WSFS Business Meeting Video Online

  1. I hope there is a more substantially attended and substantive meeting next year. (with all the hopefulness that implies)

  2. A five-and-a-half minute Business Meeting! You haven’t seen anything move this fast since the Russian Ballet in Bye Bye Birdie.

    I understood that reference.

  3. I got nosebleed from the sheer sensation of velocity.

    Without objection, I’ll note that the Preliminary Business Meeting ran almost exactly 3 minutes from the moment she called it to order until the recess, and the Main Business Meeting was almost exactly 1 minute, 30 seconds from call to order until adjournment sine die. So, 4 minutes, 30 seconds in total.

    Suggestion: WSFS Business Meeting minutes on postcards.

  4. The minutes will be much longer than one might think because they need to include the text of all of the motions, including those that were nominally rejected and then immediately passed anew, restarting their ratification clocks. I was glad to see that they used my suggested “without prejudice” rejection, because there was a suggestion that people would look at the bare rejection out of context and assume that none of the pending proposals were worth further hearing. Obviously, this was merely a technical rejection, as evidenced by the immediate re-passage of all of the items.

    I was one of several people included in pre-convention discussion of the “script” to be followed for expediting and postponing business. Of course, Business Meeting Chair Kent Bloom was the final authority on what to pass to Darusha, who could then decide how to deliver it, and they had the last word. My only official contribution was as assistant videographer, as I manage the Worldcon Events YouTube channel, gave access to Syd Weinstein, who edited the video, and did some minor editing of the description to include a link to the agenda. If you want to know just how much business the meeting breezed through, have a look at that agenda. I reckon it will take more than five minutes to read.

  5. @OGH: You haven’t seen anything move this fast since the Russian Ballet in Bye Bye Birdie. I take it you haven’t seen Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth? (I know that’s the one with Hamlet done in ~10 minutes and think it’s the one in which the play is rerun in ~2 minutes.)

    @Kevin Standlee: * If you want to know just how much business the meeting breezed through, have a look at that agenda. I reckon it will take more than five minutes to read.* At least the reading isn’t real-time critical; at the show trial of William Glen Stewart, he demonstrated that simply reading a checklist took longer than the five minutes in which it was supposed to be accomplished.

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