The 2025 Business Meeting Agenda, along with the instructions for the virtual meeting platform, may be downloaded from the “Documents” section of this page.
Accessibility note: As of June 13, the following assistive technology issues in the agenda have been corrected from the original version:
- Footnotes are now tagged and can be read properly.
- Proposed insertions and deletions will now be voiced by screen readers.
- Some tables were corrected.
Several tables in Appendix B’s financial reports are still not well formed and may not work well with assistive technology. This is a limitation of how the documents were provided by the originating conventions.
Please read the full agenda and virtual meeting instructions. Here are a few highlights we want to call out:
Lumi Virtual Meeting Platform
Log in to the Seattle Worldcon registration portal to receive your Lumi virtual meeting platform login credentials and access the virtual meeting platform. Please see the Virtual Meeting Instructions (1 MB pdf) for a detailed step-by-step process.
Test Your Tech
Please make sure to attend one of the Test Your Tech sessions on to test your ability to login to the platform and join the Zoom. There are two time windows, during which you can login at any time: – Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) or – PDT. You will log in to the Test Your Tech session the same way you will log in to the meeting; see the Virtual Meeting Instructions document for details.
Membership Requirements
You must be an attending member or virtual attending member of the Worldcon in order to attend the Business Meeting. You must purchase your membership at least 24 hours prior to the beginning of the session in order to ensure you can access the virtual meeting platform. If you purchase your membership after the 24-hour cutoff, we cannot guarantee that you will be able to access the virtual meeting platform. However, you will be able to attend any following sessions.
Watch Parties
If you are hosting a Business Meeting watch party, please make sure to read the virtual meeting instructions and contact bm-help@seattlein2025.org so that we can assist you in hosting a successful watch party.
Questions Regarding Reports
Due to the large amount of business submitted, we do not plan to take verbal reports from committees or for Worldcon/NASFiC financial reports. Instead, please email any questions to bm-submit@seattlein2025.org by . We will pass those questions along to the committees and publish their answers.
Expected Schedule
The Business Meeting schedule is not fixed; items can be moved if the body chooses, and items may take more or less time than expected. However, here is a brief overview of what we anticipate will come up on each day:
- Preliminary Business Meeting (, online, ): Standing Rule changes, Resolutions, Mark Protection Committee nominations, Agenda Setting for New Constitutional Changes.
- First Main Business Meeting (, online, ): Report from the Investigation Committee on the 2023 Hugo Awards (to be held in executive session, please see full agenda for more information), ratifications of Business Passed On.
- Second Main Business Meeting (, online, ): New Constitutional Changes, Balloting for Committee Elections (with a process that allows the ballot to be open for a sufficient period to accommodate those who are not able to attend this meeting due to time zone, religious, or other constraints).
- Third Main Business Meeting (, online, ): New Constitutional Changes.
- Site Selection Business Meeting (, in person, in the Signature Room of the Seattle Convention Center Summit Building): Results of 2027 Site Selection, Question and Answer Time for Future Seated Worldcons.
After each session, Business Meeting staff will publish a synopsis of what items were handled during the meeting and what is expected to come up at the next meeting.
Session Recaps and Recordings
Preliminary Business Meeting, held on
Peak attendance at the meeting, based on users logged into the virtual platform, was about 180, with 165 members logged in for the entirety of the meeting.
The meeting opened with a ruling on the constitutionality of the virtual meeting. The Presiding Officer ruled that the meeting was in order, and by a vote of 102-46, the ruling of the Presiding Officer was sustained.
All standing committees were reauthorized to continue as currently constituted. Nominations were taken for seats on the Mark Protection Committee; the following folks were nominated: Bruce Farr, Ron Oakes, Cliff Dunn, Alan Bond, Nicholas Whyte, Ann Marie Rudolph, Linda Ross-Mansfield, Chris Rose, Kevin Black, Alana Vincent
The following items were addressed during this session:
- C.1 Extend Business Meeting Agenda Deadline – passed
- C.2 Dude Where’s My Motion – passed as amended, striking “or whose report…” from the proposal
- C.3 Reconsidering Reconsideration – failed
- C.4 Committees Include Stakeholders – passed, and put into immediate effect
- D.1-D.3 Hugo Award Eligibility Extensions for Pantheon Season Two, The End, and Rani, Rani, Rani – failed
- D.4 Continuation of Business Meeting Study Group – passed
- D.5 Continuation of Hugo Administration Process Committee – passed
- D.6 Creation of Code of Ethics – postponed to the next meeting’s Executive Session
- D.7 Clarifying Electronic Signatures – passed
- D.8 Generative AI – referred to committee to report back to the next session to workshop language
The next meeting on July 13 will begin in Executive Session and take up all items proposed by the Investigation Committee on the 2023 Hugo Awards (C.5, D.9-12) as well as D.6, which was postponed to be taken up in Executive Session. After Executive Session, we will handle D.8, setting debate times for business passed on and new constitutional changes, and then ratification of business passed on.
It is the consensus of the Business Meeting Staff that, now that we are out of the Preliminary Business Meeting, attempting to accomplish the Agenda Setting section of the schedule, as outlined in the Additional Rules, will not save the meeting time, and so we are no longer planning to use that process; we will simply set debate times as we proceed through these items in the typical fashion.
First Main Business Meeting, held on
Peak attendance at the meeting, based on users logged into the virtual platform, was about 170, with 155 members logged in for the entirety of the meeting. The entirety of the meeting was held in executive session, receiving the report from the Investigation Committee on the 2023 Hugo Awards and handling the items of business related to that report. The proceedings of the executive session and the contents of the full report from the Investigation Committee are confidential and should not be discussed with non-WSFS members, including in public forums; the information contained in this recap represents the level of detail that is acceptable to discuss in public.
The following items were addressed during this session:
- C.5 Future Investigation Committees – passed
- D.9 Instructions to FOLLE Committee – passed
- D.10 Whistleblower’s Charter Committee – passed
- D.6 Creation of Code of Ethics – passed as amended, to be sent to the same committee created by D.10
- D.11 Worldcon Chairs and Hugo Administration – passed
- D.12 Further Disciplinary Proceedings – passed, see full summary below
The Business Meeting voted to impanel a trial committee to evaluate the evidence regarding whether the conduct of certain members of WSFS as part of the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards tends to bring WSFS into disrepute, disrupt its well-being, or hamper its work. The meeting will elect, by ballot at the session held , a committee of five members to conduct any necessary trials. This committee is to be composed of members who were neither elected to the Hugo Investigation Committee, nor makers of the motions referred to it. Charges and specifications of conduct were approved to be referred to the trial committee. Warren Buff and Randall Shephard will act as managers for WSFS’s case at any trials.
Nominations were taken for seats on the trial committee. The following members were nominated and have not declined nomination as of the time of writing this recap: Alan Bond, Kathy Bond, Steve Cooper, Bruce Farr, Terry Fong, Erica Frank, Janice Gelb, Mike Glyer, Mark Godin, Colin Harris, Keith Jewel, Kat Kourbeti, Elspeth Kovar, Ruth Lichtwardt, George R.R. Martin, Mara Michaud, John Pomeranz, Brianne Reeves, Chris Rose, Doctor Science, España Sheriff, Kris “Nchanter” Snyder, Jason Spitzer, Ian Stockdale, Leslie Turek.
Candidates should email bm-candidate@seattlein2025.org no later than to either accept or decline their nomination. Acceptances should be accompanied by a declaration of any existing conflict of interest (or a declaration that no conflicts of interest exist) along with a statement of no more than 300 words about why the candidate wishes to serve on the committee. Full minutes of the executive session have not yet been prepared, but a summary with details that can be provided in WSFS-only spaces will be published in the Lumi platform. Members who were nominated for the trial committee but were not present at the meeting can contact meeting staff at the email above if they need more information before deciding whether to accept nomination.
Members interested in serving on the committee created to look at a whistleblower’s charter and a code of ethics (also known as the WSFS Sparkle Unicorn Committee because the Presiding Officer made a silly joke) should email businessmeeting@seattlein2025.org; please also let us know if you are willing to chair that committee.
As a reminder, the proceedings of the executive session and the contents of the full report from the Investigation Committee are confidential and should not be discussed with non-WSFS members, including in public forums. However, balloting for the trial committee is not part of executive session. As such, it is fine to discuss candidates for the trial committee, so long as that discussion does not go into the particulars of the disciplinary proceedings. For example, “Alice would be a good choice because she has necessary expertise and is trustworthy” is fine in a public forum; “Alice would be a good choice because she’s a vampire hunter and knows how to tell if someone is a vampire” would not be allowed. Similarly, “I think that Alice has a conflict of interest with one of the folks involved” is fine; “Alice used to dogsit for Bob and therefore has a conflict of interest” would not be allowed.
The next meeting on will handle the report from the D.8 committee, setting debate times for business passed on and new constitutional changes, ratification of business passed on, and then begin handling the new constitutional changes. Balloting for the Mark Protection Committee and the Trial Committee will also happen at the conclusion of the session, with the ballot held open for at least 24 hours to allow members not able to attend the meeting to vote.
The meeting has 32 proposals to handle at the remaining two sessions. Business Meeting staff are looking at ways to help the meeting accomplish its business as expeditiously as possible, and members are encouraged to act judiciously when making secondary motions at the remaining meetings.
As the entirety of the meeting was held in executive session, it was not recorded; there is no video.
Second Main Business Meeting, held on
Peak attendance at the meeting, based on users logged into the virtual platform, was about 160, with 145 members logged in for the entirety of the meeting.
The following items were addressed during this session (E items are ratifications of constitutional changes; F items are new constitutional changes):
- D.8 originally titled Generative AI – substantially amended in committee and passed
- E.1 Missing in Action – ratified
- E.2 The Way We Were – ratified
- E.3 Required License Agreement – ratified
- E.4 MPC Procedures – ratified as amended to strike “hear” and insert “communicate with”
- E.5 Hugo Administration and Site Selection Monitoring – ratified as amended, striking the entirety of 5.X
- E.6 Editorial Alignment – ratified
- E.7 No More Retros – ratified
- E.8 Belated Finalists – failed
- F.1 Clarifying Active Bids – passed
- F.2 Clarifying Hugo Administrator’s Discretion – passed
- F.3 Clarifying Best Graphic Story or Comic – passed
- F.4 Clarifying Best Series – passed
- F.5 Clarifying the Best Dramatic Presentation Categories – passed
- F.6 Clarifying Nominee Diversity – passed
- F.7 Clarifying WSFS Membership Rights – referred to committee to report back to the July 25 session
- F.8 Fourteen Days of Christmas – failed
Upon the ratification of E.7 No More Retros, the new constitutional change F.21 Save the Retros was ruled out of order by the presiding officer and struck from the agenda.
Balloting for the Mark Protection Committee and the Trial Committee commenced at the conclusion of the session. The ballot remains open on the Lumi platform until .
The next session on will announce the results of the committee elections as well as taking up E.9 Cleaning Up the Art Categories, the report back from the committee for F.7, and the remainder of the new constitutional changes.
