The Seattle Worldcon 2025 extends our deepest apologies for multiple failure points which occurred during this year’s Hugo Awards ceremony. We provided insufficient organizational plans at the podium, including an inadequately designed pronunciation guide and other poorly designed materials, which at one point caused our hosts to not realize there was an additional finalist, Kamilah Cole, on another page. We further did not provide our hosts with all of the support and guidance we should have for their role on stage, particularly as Nisi and Tempest note, in directing the rehearsal. We apologize for that lack. Finally, we apologize to the khōréō editorial team for our miscommunication around reading out their entire team on stage. We have carefully documented all of these issues and shared them with LAcon V and Montréal Worldcon 2027 teams.
It is a privilege to celebrate the talented members of our community and we deeply regret causing any individual to experience anything less than the respect and recognition they earned and so fully deserve as Hugo finalists.
We thank you for being patient as we took time to respond; our response time was partially impacted by illness. However, we recognize that the delay in communication has compounded the hurt, and we are truly sorry. We should have spoken to you sooner.
In addition to this public apology, we have already undertaken the following steps:
- Offered private apologies to Ms. Cole from the Hugo Administrator and K. Tempest;
- Made concrete suggestions to LAcon V and Montréal Worldcon 2027 during a debrief meeting highlighting needed improvements in script management and related missteps that have been documented for continuity;
- Recommended creation of a new sub-area role in the Worldcon organizational structure responsible solely for the accurate handling of names. While not as visible as the errors at the podium, we also encountered technical issues with our badge printing software that were not identified until too late that failed to print diacritical marks on names correctly. We believe that centralizing this responsibility will help future Worldcons be more inclusive and respectful to individuals in all areas of the convention including the Hugo Awards.
We will continue to remain available to future Worldcons to discuss the back-of-house issues that occurred. We remain committed to learning from this experience, offering our knowledge to future conventions, and to honoring the trust placed in us by this community.
Sincerely,
Kathy Bond
Chair, Seattle Worldcon 2025
This is a good start, and….
In my opinion, part of an apology like this is specific people accepting specific responsibility. It shouldn’t include statement something like “I, Jane Doe apologize for…”
That group can also take responsibility for LARGE names on badges and perhaps allow for locations on those badges.
Recommended reading for any future Worldcon positions dealing with names and trying to make computers represent them correctly: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
Hi, I appreciate the con making this statement!
I want to make sure you get some important feedback – this apology is missing one group of finalists whose names were also not read out loud by the presenters: the r/fantasy Book Bingo team, who were finalists for Best Related Work. I can only imagine how they are feeling today, after experiencing this disappointing moment at the Hugo Ceremony, and now not even being included in the apology. Please make this right. All of the Hugo finalists deserve to be celebrated and uplifted by the Worldcon.
The quiiet room should have been available 24/7.
There was NO edible food in the area or hotel for many of us with special needs.
Many panel topic descriptions bore zero relationship to the content, particularly on writing fiction and indigenous world views.
Attendees should have been notified as soon as a single positive COVID case was identified. Test kits should have been uncluded with registration check in.
The event somehow ignored all of rhe Indigenous Sci Fi authors and Cultural Heritage Storytellers and Comic artists within 200 miles of Seattle.
Gordon Cooper
Anthropoloigist, Researcher, and DIsabled Veteran with COPD still recovering from Con COVID.
Having developed & submitted three separate panels, involving +\- seven additional collaborators across the various submissions, I would have liked to have been notified that the submissions weren’t picked, rather than to find out only when the schedule was published. In all, we spent a lot of time working on the work, and the opportunity to develop each discussion *was* time well spent, for another opportunity… but it would’ve been nice to know… particularly since so much time was saved by the festival organizers in utilizing AI to vet, select the panelists chosen.