con-news.com

serving the convention community since 2007.

Westercon 66 goes to Olive Country

By Petrea Mitchell| July 3, 2011 | 15 Comments

Westercon 66, to be held on 4th of July weekend, 2013, has been awarded to a bid for Granzella’s Inn in Williams, CA.

The only bid to actually file papers for Westercon site selection was the one for Portland, Oregon, so how did this happen? The Granzella bid began as a traditional hoax bid, but wound up with one vote more than Portland after the site selection balloting. Westercon rules require the bid that wins an election both to have filed, and to receive a majority of votes after eliminating ballots marked “No Preference”. With 3 write-in votes for other locations, this meant there was no winner.

When balloting fails, the site is chosen by a 3/4 vote of the Westercon Business Meeting, or if the meeting deadlocks, then by the LASFS Board of Directors.

In an epic 3-hour debate, four bids were presented– Portland, Granzella, Hawaii, and Utah (which actually had announced a 2014 bid, but apparently decided to throw their hat into the 2013 ring as well at the last moment).

Votes were taken on the Portland and Granzella bids, both of which failed to get 3/4 in favor. There was an attempt to declare a deadlock at this point, but it failed after a LASFS BoD member declared that the BoD would really prefer for it to be settled by the Business Meeting.

Votes on Utah and Hawaii then failed, as did another attempt at calling deadlock. As online comments began to support the idea of a steel cage match to resolve it once and for all, a motion passed to reconsider the Granzella vote, which had been the closest, and the revote finally passed at 93-27.

Despite an apparently uncontested bid and traditionally low attendance at the bid showcase session, it seems that people do still care very much about whether Westercon gets held, and where.

The only question remaining is: do the people at Granzella’s know they’re hosting a Westercon?

FacebookShare
Category: Westercon

Comments

15 Responses to “Westercon 66 goes to Olive Country”

  1. Mike Parker
    July 3rd, 2011 @ 10:42 pm

    Was there a secondary or back-up location selected?

  2. Kevin Standlee
    July 4th, 2011 @ 12:28 am

    Actually, the Business Meeting gave the bid to Andy Trembley and Kevin Roche personally, and the physical site is not actually Granzella’s, but “wherever Kevin & Andy manage to find a place, as long as it’s somewhere in Western North America or Hawaii.” A site selected under the “fallback” provisions when no eligible bid wins the paper ballot isn’t actually for a site but for a committee.

  3. AmyCat =^.^= (Book Universe)
    July 4th, 2011 @ 4:31 am

    Much as I’d like to see another Portland WesterCon, I do NOT want to see a poorly-organized Portland WesterCon. (A “bad” WesterCon can taint a locale’s reputation for DECADES.) The Portland bid seemed apathetic, especially compared to the Olive Party on Friday, which ROCKED.

  4. Andrew Wakefield
    July 4th, 2011 @ 8:20 am

    But by having ‘Granzella’ win, isn’t it now required to be held there? It was listed as a place, not a committee.

  5. Andrew Wakefield
    July 4th, 2011 @ 8:32 am

    Maybe I should clarify what I just said… If Granzella put in a bid without actually being a place then the two people that placed the bid were counting on it going to ‘Fallback’, which – to me at least – seems just a tiny but nefarious (putting up a bid without really having a location to hold it) so they can decide to hold it where ever they wanted.

  6. Adrienne Foster
    July 4th, 2011 @ 9:37 pm

    The Granzella’s bid started out as a hoax. The location was a deliberately inappropriate setting for a Westercon just to get a few laughs; however, once Kevin and Andy turned serious about doing the convention, it is clear Westercon 66 needs be somewhere with better logistics. They are going to keep close enough to the spirit of their bid to first look around the Sacramento area for their site.

  7. steve
    July 4th, 2011 @ 10:48 pm

    [...] Westercon 66 goes to Olive Country : con-news.com [...]

  8. Kevin Roche
    July 5th, 2011 @ 4:58 am

    Andrew, Granzella’s is a delicatessen in the middle of the Sacramento Valley with a 43-room hotel. The Olive Country bid was absolutely begun as a traditional joke hoax, on a par with the “Casa de Fruta” Worldcon hoax we perpetrated in 2006.

    When we discovered the level of engagement the hoax was creating (and the way it might manifest in the voting), Andy and I decided we were willing to organize a Westercon in the event the business meeting asked us to do so. That is what happened.

    We are first investigating possible venues in Sacramento proper, but will range farther afield if necessary. Sacramento has the transportation infrastructure necessary to support a Westercon.

  9. España Sheriff
    July 5th, 2011 @ 7:04 am

    Note: Speaking as a voter, not part of the committee, although I have now volunteered. My opinion is my own.

    Short version;

    Granzella is a real place (see longer version). So is Portland.

    However once site selection balloting fails and it goes to the business meeting, the process changes. You are no longer considering “where” but “who”. You are voting on a “committee to bid” not on a site.

    It gets confusing because the shorthand people use is still to say Portland for the people who were part of the committee which was bidding for Portland and Olive Country for the committee formed by the former hoax bid people. (Kevin Standlee can correct me if I am mis-stating there I’m sure :)

    Longer version with more opinions;

    As a hoax bid the Granzella site was chosen because it was clearly NOT a place anyone would really want to have a Westercon. One of the key elements of a hoax is making sure it will not be confused for a “real” planned bid.

    The point of the hoax was not to win, but to motivate Portland into stepping up to the challenge and to educate/involve the Westercon membership in the site selection process.

    As a voter, my first vote for Granzella was a “no confidence” vote against Portland-most of my friends expressed the same thing. No one I know who voted for Granzella expected (or wanted) a Granzella Westercon.

    When 41 other members agreed with me, that was when the Olive Country committee made the decision to move forward, not before. This wasn’t a end-run around the rules, this was a challenge to Portland that was not met to anyone’s satisfaction, which resulted in the challengers feeling obliged to put their money (and effort, and enthusiasm) where their mouth is :)

  10. Lunatic Esex
    July 5th, 2011 @ 10:59 am

    I’m sure the reality is that it was well recognized at the business meeting that the vote to reconsider the Granzella bid was actually a vote of confidence towards the “committee” of Kevin Roche and Andy Trembly, including confidence that they’d be able to secure an appropriate location in the two years between that time and the actual 2013 convention.

    Similarly, this could be considered a vote of no confidence towards the Portland bid committee, which had a location, but otherwise weren’t thought to be as competent at actually running a convention.

    It’s a simple fact that Kevin and Andy didn’t run the Granzella hoax bid (/party) with the intent of actually winning the vote. So there was no nefarious intent in this way to hoodwink the Westercon membership to allow them to select an arbitrary location without it being considered as a key element of their bid. It was only after the initial vote took place, and much further discussion was had, that they decided they’d go ahead and step up to put their money where their mouth is, as it were.

  11. Tab Clearance « Genreville
    July 5th, 2011 @ 6:01 pm

    [...] The hosting of the next Westercon is won by a hoax bid after the only legitimate bid fails to gain s… Kevin Standlee offers a pro tip: “When you’re trying to get three-fourths of the people in a room to vote for you, and when you know there’s a pretty good chance that many of them are the people who voted for your opposition back when you only needed a majority and didn’t get it, you are not helping your cause when you say that anyone who voted for your opposition should be ashamed of themselves and start personally insulting the opposition’s leadership.” (via Cheryl Morgan) [...]

  12. Adrienne Foster
    July 5th, 2011 @ 11:02 pm

    I beg to differ with Lunatic Esex’s comments about Portland’s competency. I have no doubt they are capable of running a convention; they’ve already proven they can with Orycon. What was distressing was their lack of initiative in marketing their bid. If Westercon is going to survive, it is imperative it has a committee that shows more gumption in marketing. It is not clear how the Portland committee would handle the rest of the convention, but its campaign was a miserable demonstration of their PR capabilities.

  13. Corey Cole
    July 8th, 2011 @ 6:05 pm

    I agree with both Adrienne and the quote from Kevin Standlee. I did not vote in site selection because nothing in Portland’s presentation got me excited about going there. At the meeting, Andy and Kevin made their case for becoming a legitimate bid very well. From what I heard, they had no intention of doing that until after their hoax bid got the vote plurality. They were relaxed, did an excellent job of explaining why they were competent to run – and market – a good Con, and Andy even spoke out *against* his own bid by saying that people should not vote for it just to have a decision made; they should only vote for the bid if they really wanted it to win.

    Meanwhile, several Portland supporters came across as, “We deserve this bid because we announced it two years ago and did the paperwork properly. Nobody will want to put in that much work again if they know a hoax bid can steal the vote at the last minute.” While I am a big fan of hard work, you have to show me results that show some of that work. The Portland committee did not manage to do that.

    I think the vote was also a reaction to the San Jose Westercon being so small – an experience Con-runner estimated it at 500-600 on-site attendees vs. the 1200-2000+ of past Westercons. The people who voted in San Jose want to see Westercon be revitalized. By assuming they were automatically winning the bid, the Portland crew did not demonstrate that they are exciting, different, and committed to increasing Westercon attendance.

  14. Kevin Roche
    July 11th, 2011 @ 11:40 pm

    In the interest of getting the facts straight, it was not Andy but Kevin (me) who spoke *against* our bid during the debate.

    (I’m the short one with the striped mohawk, Andy’s the tall one with the shaved head. Folks confuse us all the time, believe it or not.)

  15. Kevin Standlee
    July 13th, 2011 @ 6:16 am

    In case there’s anyone left still wondering why a bid can be awarded without a concrete specific site in these circumstances, go read Section 3.16 of the Westercon Bylaws. When sites are selected under Section 3.16 (which is what happened here), all of the normal restrictions go away.

    Of course, there’s actually nothing that compels an “ordinary” bid to hold their Westercon in the actual site that they filed. There are cases of groups winning bids and then losing their sites and having to relocate. There’s no obvious way to force a Westercon bid to actually hold their Westercon in the actual site they filed in their paperwork. (Don’t even think of replies in the category of “sue them.” When you resort to the courts, you’ve lost the game before you started.)



  • Like the site? Any donation you can make helps.

  • Our Virtual Artist Alley

    Have an Etsy Site and want to advertise on con-news? We offer very low rates for members of Etsy, email luckycreaturelabel@gmail.com for details.


  • Meta



  • Categories


  • Twitter Updates

      follow me on Twitter





    • CON-NEWS TEAM

      Shawn "Scott" Smith-Founder.

      Petrea Mitchell- Lead Reporter.

      Shawn Marshall Lead Reporter

      Join the team! Advertise! Tips! Breaking News! Email us at luckycreaturelabel@gmail.com


    • Archives