exhaustedI missed my first WSFS Business Meeting since 1989, although I was an onlooker at one remove. A very minimal meeting was held. I understand that 23 members attended in the West Plaza Hotel in Wellington, which makes this year's meeting larger than those we held in Yokohama in 2007. Because the meeting was essentially pre-scripted to postpone everything that possibly could be postponed, it lasted only a few minutes, according to the descriptions I saw on Soon Lee's Twitter and Daniel Spector typing on the CZ Discord channel for Major Events. I understand that the meeting was recorded and will be posted eventually.
After the Business Meeting I got a brief bite of lunch while setting up for the Hugo Awards ceremony. Although the Hugo Awards web site did not provide the full coverage that we've done for years now, I was watching and tweeting out the winners in each category, as well as a small amount of additional stuff.
Some people put on their fancy clothes and tweeted out pictures of themselves. Not me. Too hot here. I did wear my Dublin 2019 staff polo shirt, though.
The ceremony was long. Too long, really. It lasted more than three hours. There were technical glitches, but they were expected, and really, it was astonishing that the CZ Tech Team managed to pull this off at all, given the complexity of the event. That's not what made it too long. I think there was just too much extra talk in the ceremony, and not enough presenting of trophies.
After the ceremony, my work wasn't done. I posted the summary winners at TheHugoAwards.org right after the ceremony (finally) ended, but my job wasn't done yet. I had to edit the 2020 Hugo Awards web page to flag up the winners, reorder the finalists in the order of finish, and patch in the link to the detailed statistics. That took a bit less than an hour, thanks to Nicholas Whyte helpfully sending out the stats document right after the ceremony.
With the official jobs done, it was off to the parties. I spent most of my time hanging out in the Chicon 8 party, and I enjoyed it a lot. I stayed until just before they were ready to kick us out. Yes, the parties do close. There are several "bands" of parties all using the same Zoom meeting infrastructure, and they need time to reset the breakout rooms and relabel everything and change shifts of volunteers.
Tomorrow we have the Mark Protection Committee meeting, the Closing Ceremonies, and the virtual Old Pharts Party. And maybe I'll have enough time and energy to go look around the virtual exhibit hall. As it stands now, I'm sure glad I don't have to work tomorrow, and I'm not setting an alarm.