Seattle Worldcon 2025 held its inaugural Business Meeting Town Hall online today (the first, scheduled for May 4, having been cancelled).

Business Meeting chair Jesi Lipp provided visuals to familiarize viewers with the basic appearance of their participation screen and the way virtual platform provider, Lumi Global will facilitate the Zoom sessions. Lipp described how the chair will be able to identify people’s requests to speak for or against motions, points of order, and other claims of parliamentary priority.

Lumi Global’s services will cost $20,000, said Lipp, some part being paid by the Scalzi Family Foundation.

Seattle’s decision to hold the Business Meeting in a virtual format for the first time ever is touted as a way to “open participation to both attending and virtual attending members of the Worldcon, and hopefully enable broad participation without the need to sacrifice other convention activities.” Today’s Town Hall drew around 42 participants, the vast majority Seattle committee division and department heads and staff, the rest identifiable business meeting regulars and a few others.

One Town Hall participant challenged the legitimacy of convening a virtual Business Meeting, citing WSFS Constitution section 5.1.1: “Business Meetings of WSFS shall be held at advertised times at each Worldcon”. Business Meeting chair Jesi Lipp said that the committee had the authority to “define their own boundaries” – which is to say, give “at each Worldcon” a novel meaning. Lipp indicated their decision would be issued as one of the rulings of the chair at the virtual meeting, and said that the meeting has the procedural ability to challenge a ruling of the chair, and if it votes to overrule the chair there would just be an in-person meeting at Seattle. (Presently, the only in-person session planned for is the one where Site Selection voting results will be announced.) This was an unexpected concession.

While only Seattle 2025 WSFS members admitted to the Zoom session will be able to participate and vote, the virtual Business Meeting will be publicly livestreamed, and also recorded, with the livestream recordings made available on YouTube. Chair Jesi Lipp noted that if the meeting enters executive session – for example, to receive the report of the Committee on Investigation into the Chengdu Hugo Awards vote which was appointed at Glasgow 2024 – that portion of the meeting will not be livestreamed.

Business Meeting sessions will be supported by a Discord channel where people can carry on side discussions. The Discord will only be available for use for a number of hours beginning before the meeting and sometime afterwards, and made read-only the rest of the time. (Lipp pointed out that people obviously still have the use of other social media venues which they already use to discuss WSFS issues.)  The Discord will be subject to the convention’s Code of Conduct.

The deadline to submit items for the Business Meeting agenda is June 4. Send them to bm-submit@seattlein2025.org.

The dates of the virtual Business Meetings are:

Friday, July 4, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)
Sunday, July 13, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)
Saturday, July 19, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)
Friday, July 25, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)