DisCon III chair Mary Robinette Kowal today took responsibility and apologized for the Raytheon Intelligence and Space sponsorship that the convention accepted: “Statement and Apology on DisCon III Sponsorship”.
The sponsor’s corporate logo was on the backdrop used for red carpet photos before the Hugo Awards ceremony, and acknowledged from the stage during the ceremony. The ceremony also seems to be the first place people became generally aware of the sponsorship. Unlike Google, which was also thanked during the ceremony, Raytheon was not one of the sponsors acknowledged in the DisCon III Souvenir Book (page 54).
Statement on DisCon III Sponsorship
I am Mary Robinette Kowal, and I was the chair for DisCon III. I take full responsibility for accepting Raytheon Intelligence and Space as a sponsor, and I apologize for doing so.
The decision tree that led us to this point is filled with branches that sound like excuses for my own culpability. At the root of it is simply that in accepting funding from Raytheon Intelligence and Space and partnering with them for the members’ red carpet event, I was wrong.
That choice has caused harm and damage to people: the finalists, who were unaware; the people in our communities; the members and staff of Worldcon, who trusted me to make good choices.
I am sorry that I let you all down.
DisCon III is making an anonymous contribution to an organization dedicated to peace, equal to the amount we received from Raytheon. I am also personally contributing to the same organization.
The delay in responding added to the distress that we caused. For this, I ask your forgiveness. We needed to have conversations that were slowed by post-convention travel.
For the past several days, we have read your comments in email and on social media. Thank you for sharing them with us and trusting that you would be heard and taken seriously. Your honesty and sincerity are what make our community a better place.
Future conrunners can avoid our mistakes by:
- Developing a sponsorship policy for your organization that reflects the values and concerns of our community.
- Creating a robust plan for doing due diligence on potential sponsors.
- Creating a mission and value statement against which to measure actions.
We did none of those. Our Code of Conduct says that DisCon III aims to build an inclusive community for all fans. This sponsorship did not achieve that goal.
I cannot erase the harm that my actions caused. This happened on my watch. It is my fault, and I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused.
Signed,
Mary Robinette Kowal
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And now I need to tweak my as yet unpublished piece about all this again.
I’m glad this apology happened and I think the restitution is reasonable. I hope future conventions will pledge not to accept similar sponsorships. I’ve already launched this conversation among the organizers of Finncon 2022.
Whether or not you think they should have apologized, that’s a pretty good example of the form.
I’m glad Mary Robinette Kowal did this and I understand why she’s avoiding details that may sound either like excuses or like throwing a volunteer under a bus…but there’s still a whole heap of weirdness around this. In particular, the unusual red carpet photo event, the direct association with the Hugo ceremony and the apparent last-minute nature of Raytheon involvement. Was that last aspect the key factor here? i.e. a sudden opportunity appeared and a rushed decision was made?
Tick
I note that this, like the Con financial statements to date, avoids saying just how much the Raytheon sponsorship was worth. Is there some reason that this cannot be disclosed? It seems like an important part of the story. Same holds true for the Google sponsorship as well. Just how much danegeld was involved?
I guess we’ll find out in the financial statements in next year’s business meeting. I assume we aren’t finding out now because the number will be embarrassingly small.
Ryan H: I agree with your comment. I would add that if a person feels they have done something that warrants an apology, then making one is in order. There doesn’t need to be a complete consensus about whether the thing was wrong.
One note added on Twitter: they’re deliberately not saying what charity received the donation to avoid pile ons.
https://twitter.com/worldcon2021/status/1474107582444974084?t=0pPalrjR-KzW0qQmkHUU-Q&s=19
Camestros Felapton says I guess we’ll find out in the financial statements in next year’s business meeting. I assume we aren’t finding out now because the number will be embarrassingly small.
Now that’s an interesting conjecture that I hadn’t thought of. Selling out for pocket change, eh? That would be really embarrassing. (I’m not say that they sold out. That’s a matter of personal opinion.)
I was a little vexed when I saw the Raytheon references, credit, and red-carpet backdrop at the Omni Shoreham. It reminded me just a bit of when I was a kid in Hong Kong, and we kept running into Dow Chemical employees and families, knowing that firm was cranking out napalm to drop on the Viet Cong (and, of course, bystanders). It was very much not a friendly expat community.
At the same time, I’m reminded strongly of Mark Twain’s retort, when he kept hearing ongoing complaints that charitable contributions from H.H. Rogers (CEO of Standard Oil) were “tainted”: He drawled back: “They’re twice tainted. T’aint yours, and t’aint mine.” I.e., a fistful of free money from a war manufacturer, taken in exchange for a nod and a tacky backdrop placement, means said manufacturer now possesses that much less money to make war with.
(Before someone gripes at me about the phrase “a little vexed”: I. don’t typically spend time venting anger at things anger won’t help. But you do you.)
Camestros Felapton: With respect to Google, they are thanked in the Souvenir Book — “Captioning at DisCon III is made possible by Google.” I couldn’t put a number to what that costs, but I believe it’s not peanuts.
c4c
I mean, I’m not saying it would have all been great if the sponsorship was huge and would fund the next six Worldcons or something, but just in terms of basic plot structure, you’d want a real psychological dilemma here. A Faustian bargain should be for something more than squishy stress ball rocket ships*
*[I would have stolen one of those if I’d been there though and scratched the name off]
Thanks.
I suspect there is no number high enough that some commenters wouldn’t see it as selling out their principles cheap.
I also suspect there is no number low enough that some commenters wouldn’t see it as smart & easy free money in exchange for a couple logos and a name drop.
Either way I have trouble seeing many ways a hard number allows for a productive discussion that no number prevents. I have a lot of sympathy for their decision.
Genuine question because I haven’t been looking at that side of thing: has there actually been much of a Worldcon-shouldn’t-apologise-for-Raytheon thing?
Mike Glyer says Camestros Felapton: With respect to Google, they are thanked in the Souvenir Book — “Captioning at DisCon III is made possible by Google.” I couldn’t put a number to what that costs, but I believe it’s not peanuts.
That’s difficult to calculate. if it was costed out at actual market costs, around fifteen dollars per minute which is what I’ve seen charged for jobs locally. Now I doubt that’s what they actually costed at as it was a donation. You’d need to know how many minutes of closed captioning they did.
Briefly
a nice apology
Ms. Kowal had my thoughts on the issue earlier this week.
The only public-facing issue that I think should be resolved is the genesis of the original sponsorship. Did someone approach Raytheon? Did Raytheon approach the con? Was the sponsorship something that came out of Raytheon employees who were SF fans and had a chance to influence where Raytheon spent money? All anyone can do is speculate and that ends up worse than just being inconveniently transparent.
Regards,
Dann
One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. – Golda Meir
MRK is a class act. I accept her shouldering of responsibility, and I admire it. It is hard for me to believe that she was personally at fault.
Good apology. Good to contribute the money to a humanitarian organization. Still angry, but this was the best way to handle the situation in the aftermath of the ceremony.
Leadership is knowing when it’s your responsibility even when it’s not your fault
It is well that the chairfan owned up and apologized. It would be better, however, if she had also informed us how much Raytheon and Google paid for their sponsorships–and whose bright idea this was in the first place. I’m sure she didn’t create this problem all by her lonesome.
It’s my opinion that the problem was caused by ineptitude and lack of forethought, not malice–especially the little matter that no one publicized the controversial sponsorships ahead of time. If I were a sponsor, I’d appreciate a little pre-convention publicity, after all.
Regarding her suggestions for the future–which I think are good ones–it would improve matters if our community would develop a general set of customs regarding corporate sponsors, ones that any convention could use as boilerplate for its own policy.
My own ideas on such would be to limit sponsorship to companies with some solid connection to the SF&F genre. Good examples would be publishing houses, video game companies, and Hollywood firms–nearly all major players in those areas deal in SF&F these days. Bad examples would be hi-tech outfits, particularly the Merchants of Menace (meaning international arms sellers).
As I said in an earlier comment on this controversy, he who pays the piper, calls the tune. We need to be careful who we deal with.
What number would make the choices acceptable or understandable for you?
How much does the average worldcon cost these days? I note that the cost of world cons has gone up by a factor of 50 since the 1960s, and I am interested in knowing what has contributed to that aside from general inflation.
I think the apology is a very clear message that the sponsorship was a mistake and that other conventions should not repeat it.
Also, donating the sponsorship money to a peace organization makes it clear that the amount of money doesn’t matter.
Regardless of its impact on discussion, I think DisCon III needs to detail how much Raytheon and any other sponsor paid, if not now then in the financial reports for the convention.
If you search for the phrase “sponsored by Raytheon Intelligence & Space” that division puts a lot of money in STEM-related and space-related projects.
This is one of the best public apologies I have ever seen. No weasel words. No blame-shifting. Just a simple, “Here is the problem. I am to blame. Here is how I am making amends.”
Classy and well-done from start to finish. Especially in an era where far too many public apologies boil down “I’m sorry you were offended,” which shifts the blame onto the offended party, rather than “I’m sorry I was offensive,” which accepts the blame.
Gideon Marcus: Since you are using the Sixties as your baseline, one major difference is that Worldcons generally now use a convention center. In the U.S., at least, it has been common for Worldcons to be able to get the function space in hotels in return for meeting a commitment that a certain number of room-nights will be paid for by members. Cons that are held solely in hotels therefore cost less. Convention centers represent a substantial expense to most Worldcons — something that probably can be tracked in the financial reports.
Click.
Would just like to note to the folks who are wondering how this could happen, it’s one of the peculiarities of the DC area that military-oriented technology firms advertise like fast-food chains or car dealerships; it would not be seen as a big deal. My suspicion is that Raytheon approached the committee; not the other way around.
Then again, since this matter has come up, maybe there should be a code of conduct for regarding recruiting sponsorship for bid/worldcon committees.
Based on the reactions, it was a good idea to do an apology, though IMHO it was way too abject. The donation to an unnamed org was a very nice touch, and Kowal was wise not to say where the donation went or the amount, or even the decision tree(s) that lead to the sponsorship – either of the sponsorships. It’s just opportunity for people to rain down fire on Twitter.
Enough’s enough, after all. Some folks feel they screwed up, they apologized and made some restitution, and that should (hahaha, oh internet . . .) be the end of it. I know everyone wants to know everything, but . . . no, people really don’t need to know everything, IMHO.
BTW I trust Kowal & co., based on that apology, to not pick “imperialist whatever-it-was” some idiot said on Twitter that I just saw, for their “restitution” donation.
@Camestros Felapton et al.: If they’re wise, they’ll just total all sponsorships on one line item and total all donations on another line item, without breaking it down at all. They should answer any questions at the Business Meeting with a simple “we’re not releasing specific dollar amounts or organization names.”
A key element of that is keeping sponsorship distinct from the Hugo Awards plus the finalists & winners. One of the worst aspects of this is sponsorship of ceremony tied to Raytheon to the attendees.
Section 2.8 of the WSFS constitution might have some words to say about that reply.
It’s our WSFS and our con. Why would anyone want less accountability?
@Gideon Marcus – a modern Worldcon costs around $1.5 million. I looked at the 2018 financial report recently – the convention center and other facilities costs were around 1/3 of that (you have to rent it and pay for all the furniture). Tech costs were about 1/6 of the total – we expect high production values from the Masquerade and Hugos, plus microphones in all the rooms and etc. That will only go up now that we’re trying to offer hybrid conventions – that stuff costs a LOT.
@Camestros Felapton – the trouble is that the Hugo Awards are the only think most people know about Worldcon, so they are the thing corporate sponsors will most likely want to be associated with, rather than just generic “Worldcon”
@Camestros Felapton: Oh, interesting, thanks. That doesn’t affect what I said, which was about the reporting, which is under 2.9. But yes, someone could do what you allude to – any time, not just at the B.M. (Why would they have their full books there anyway?) Then Discon III could insist on an NDA (“reasonable conditions”). 😉
Hopefully no one is really so insatiable as to do that, though. It really should just be left alone at this point.
As one of the earlier DisCon III scandals was trying to limit Hugo finalist numbers to keep the costs of the event down, I do wonder how much the ceremony cost, and how much the costs were defrayed. I get twitchy if ever more of my membership fee goes on fripperies like the pre-Hugo reception. Imposing moral constraints on sponsors will tend to make the money dry up, as of course its the companies that no-one likes that spend most to improve their image.
I see from Chris Barklay’s post that raytheon had made the effort of producing a foam rocket.
@rcade: As @Camestros Felapton pointed out, the accountability is baked in. It doesn’t mean anyone needs it (ETA: specific dollar amounts) at this point. Folks already held the con accountable (specific amounts [ETA: etc.] seem moot after the fact), Kowal accepted that & apologized, etc.
But folks love to stir up trouble when they don’t need to, ’tis true.
ETA: Obviously my opinion, which differs from yours. 🙂
I think we need to know the amount and why the con thought that funding was needed. We can’t have an informed discussion about the cost of rejecting such sponsorship without knowing the amount.
For now. Don’t rule out the possibility I may be persuading you. 🙂
I’d say that because they have the ability to make the donation that they clearly can’t have needed the sponsorship, since they have the money now, but there were those late supporting membership purchases. It’s quite possible that they did need the money when they agreed to the sponsorship and to make deposits and such and that it was only paid for by membership purchases after the fact.
I’m glad they didn’t leave the charity vulnerable to harassment – it’s happened before, unfortunately, for example as a reaction to one of the works on the BRW longlist this year (not at all the fault of the creator). Especially after the delay in response – an understandable delay, but people who like to have excuses to bully don’t care about that – lead to finalists being the primary target of ire.
I think a question I want answered over the “Hugo Award – Sponsored by Raytheon” mess, is where’s the statement from the Mark Protection Committee? An Individual Worldcon is not allowed to dilute the Trademarks through sponsorship deals, and needed explicit authorisation.
The MPC must either have authorised this, or been caught napping over an individual Worldcon deciding to dilute the WSFS’s Intellectual Property.
That’s a very good apology.
I think we do have a right to know the amount(s) of sponsorships. We have no need at all to have the names of specific fen involved in the decisions involved, risking pike-on and harassment of individuals.
Every part of this statement suffers from ill-informed assumptions. It is to weep that I have to post your comment in order to correct it because you’re doubtless out there spreading this misinformation to others.
The use of the Hugo service mark was not conveyed to the sponsors. DisCon III let the sponsors be advertised at the award ceremony. Two radically different ideas.
The Mark Protection Committee “protects” against infringement of the Society’s rights to its own marks. It never has to be consulted by the current Worldcon committee. “Never” includes not having to be consulted about what signs hang in the auditorium where the Hugos are given out. If there’s an issue with that, the MPC has no role in addressing it.
God I love hanging around literary types.
Lis Carey says I think we do have a right to know the amount(s) of sponsorships. We have no need at all to have the names of specific fen involved in the decisions involved, risking pike-on and harassment of individuals.
One sponsorship had I believe a fixed amount, the Raytheon one. The Google one given what I now I believe didn’t have any actual monetary value but was in-kind donation that involved no actual cash being handed over to Worldcon.
And I have no idea why the Worldcon leadership is so damn determined not to admit how much Raytheon gave. Even the anonymous donation seems in part intended to keep that a secret.
@Mike Glyer
The body that has control over the WSFS’s service marks is the MPC. (1.7.1)
All Worldcons are directly instructed to make a public announcement that the WSFS owns the service marks. (2.2)
And please be aware I chose the term Dilution specifically, in the legal meaning of “trading upon the goodwill and established renown of such marks”. I think you’re being somewhat disingenuous to try and claim it was ‘merely advertising’ rather than a Sponsorship deal. That could only be true if it was an open market place where anyone could have bought air-time during the Worldcon.
Raytheon were clearly given special privileges to associate and trade upon the goodwill of the Hugo mark. There was a Raytheon sponsored red carpet, Raytheon appear to have been given access to the nominees for photo opportunities, and it is unclear what other considerations Raytheon received.
It’s the difference between buying air time during the Superbowl broadcast, which is Advertising, and having your logo chalked onto the playing field, which is Sponsorship. The latter being a direct “trading upon the goodwill and established renown”, and needs to be authorised or it’s mark dilution.
I see no text in the WSFS constitution that allows for a Worldcon to authorise a third party to associate themselves with the WSFS’s marks without approval of the MPC.
So if the MPC did not authorise this, it’s mark dilution.
It certainly feels like the many of people asking for the exact amount are mostly interested in being able to follow it up with a post of
“The sponsorship was for $X! See the perfidy laid bare!”
What constructive incentive do they have to play along with the witch hunt?
An apology has been made. Responsibility has been taken. Suggestions for future changes have been made.
If the standard is that anyone running an event should be prepared for any and all decisions to be re-litigated in public down to the smallest detail I can’t imagine there will be many takers in the future.
Jay Blanc: Specifically choosing to use a legal term wrongly doesn’t strengthen your argument, it invalidates it. Dilution is a concept related to unauthorized use of a mark. In the first place, Raytheon didn’t use the mark. So this term is not applicable to what happened.
If authority was relevant, which it is not for the reason already given, the display of Raytheon’s logo and announcement of their sponsorship at the photo session and ceremony was self-evidently authorized — as it was done by DisCon III itself.
@ Jay Blanc
You have no clue what you’re talking about. The restriction prevent the con from licensing out the marks for to other organizations to use. For example, they could not have accepted money and given Google a license to stick the mark on their search page for a year.
You have it entirely backwards.