There was a pretty good queue stretching from the Grand Ballroom clear back to the doors to the Hilton hotel.
I went in through a side entrance and found my seat assigned to our coverage team. Here's what it looked like shortly before the doors opened, while final technical checks were being done. I set up my computer and got ready for the show.
Around 7:45, the doors opened, people started filing in, and I started our CoverItLive coverage. As I've explained before, this is low-bandwidth text-only coverage of the event, suitable for people with lower-bandwidth connections. Live video streaming of the ceremony was being run by Worldcon 76, and I'm happy to report that the live streaming worked and everyone who had sufficient bandwidth was apparently able to watch it.
Susan de Guardiola joined me just before the ceremony started. She had been taking pictures in the pre-ceremony reception and was therefore able to illustrate our coverage with photos of finalists (and winners). She did a great job with this. She also would post the finalists, and I would post the winner once their name was announced. Cheryl joined us "from our studios in Darkest Wiltshire," which were especially dark because it was the wee hours of the morning when Cheryl had to be up to be our studio coordinator. Cheryl also managed posting the winners and the links to the results after the ceremony, taking a huge load off of me, for which I'm very grateful.
After the ceremony, the winners and acceptors took the stage for photos, while we did a little bit of "post show" coverage before thanking all and sundry and signing off until next year in Dublin.
Then we collapsed. Doing this coverage is surprisingly stressful, and both Susan and I were zonked. Cheryl, not surprisingly, let us know she was going back to bed to get a few more hours of sleep after she got the results online.
One unfortunate development is that Worldcon 76's live-stream can't be replayed (although there was no issue during the broadcast) because the BBC has lodged a copyright infringement (presumably a copyright bot) against it. Nobody here has the brain cycles to work on showing that we had clearances for those clips, and we're just grateful that the show aired live rather than being cut off as has happened before.
When the lights went out at 11 PM, that was the sign that we really had to leave. I bade Susan good night, wandered around socializing with people for a few more minutes, then headed back for the barn.
Lisa was already in bed. She'd gone to Callahan's Place in the Exhibit Hall, where the live-stream was broadcast to the people there. She was rather annoyed that the base designers referred to an "unknown volunteer" who assembled the trophies, and that apparently there was someone who stood up in Callahan's and claimed to be that volunteer. Well, actually, Lisa was the person who did the assembly, back on Thursday. I announced that during our CoverItLive. Had we known this was going to be something in the ceremony script, we would have told them who deserved the credit.
Minor hiccups aside, I'm really happy with how the ceremony went. The audience liked it, most of the technical issues were overcome, and there are now a lot of happy Hugo (and other) award winners and less-happy-but-able-to-go-to-the-Hugo-Lo
I'm also happy that my first commitment on Monday, the final day of Worldcon 76, is not until 10:30 AM (instead of more like 8:30), and that we're not leaving San Jose until Wednesday, so we don't have to move out of the hotel tomorrow. Lisa doesn't even have to get out of bed because there's no WSFS meeting. I hope she's able to sleep in. Worldcon is rough on everyone, but she seems particularly zonked out.