New Addition to the Dublin 2019 Business Meeting Agenda

Dublin 2019 Business Meeting Presiding Officer Jesi Lipp has used their discretion to add a post-deadline motion to amend the WSFS Constitution  to the agenda (see August 2 update):

Commentary: The decision by Dublin 2019 to terminate the sale of attending memberships and day passes two weeks prior to the start of the convention is largely without precedent. We note that this is likely due to a desire to avoid a last-minute swamping like what happened on the first day of the Helsinki Worldcon in 2017, a legitimate concern, and thus with this amendment we make no attempt to restrict the right of a convention to act to control attendance in such a manner as to avoid repeating that scenario.

Though informal indications appear to have been made that supporting memberships will still be sold in conjunction with site selection, the decision of Dublin to restrict membership sales in advance (and the phrasing used with them doing so) raises the specter that a decision could be made to block the sale of supporting memberships in conjunction with site selection. This chance is higher than it might have been in the past due to Worldcon moving around the world more. Thus the risk of a committee that isn’t as familiar with Worldcon’s traditions and practices being seated and then “losing something in translation” with respect to the precedent set by Dublin (of not selling attending memberships) and refusing to sell supporting memberships, creates complications with respect to the hand-carrying of ballots for at-site site selection voting. Based on several decades of prevailing practice, it seems wiser to simply codify this portion of existing practice.

[Thanks to Jo Van Ekeren for the story.]

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