San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions, Inc.

A brand-new convention has arrived in San Francisco. FOGcon (“Friends of Genre” Con) is scheduled for March 11-13, 2011, so now’s the time to buy your membership. It’s a literary-themed San Francisco SF/F con in the tradition of Wiscon and Readercon, with Honored Guests ranging from writers to scientists to artists. We will build community, exchange ideas, and share our love for the literature of imagination.

For 2011, the inaugural guests are Pat Murphy and Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, with Fritz Leiber as the Ghost of Honor.

The SFSFC Board of Directors adopted two bylaw amendments at their meeting on November 20, 2010.

• The corporation’s fiscal year now ends on the last day of March instead of June, effective immediately. (This creates a short fiscal year July 1, 2010-March 31, 2011.)
• The Board now has increased flexibility in setting the size of the Board of Directors to any number between and including 7 and 13 members. (The SFSFC Board currently consists of 11 members.)

Details of the newly-adopted changes are in Articles 9 and 3, respectively, of the updated SFSFC Bylaws.

SFSFC has established its initial board meeting schedule for 2011. The Board of Directors is scheduled to meet on March 19, July 30, and November 19, 2011. All meetings are on Saturdays, and all meetings are currently scheduled for 11:00 AM Pacific Time. For further details, see our Meeting Schedule.

Meeting dates may be changed on relatively short notice.

Although SFSFC will not be offering a scholarship to attend SMOFCon 28 in San José, the Texas-based convention-running group ALAMO announced yesterday that they will offer one. ALAMO will offer a $300 scholarship to be used toward the cost of attending SMOFCon 28. See their SMOFCon Scholarship Application for further details.

SFSFC originally created its SMOFCon Scholarship Program to send promising Bay Area conrunners to the annual SMOFCon convention-runners conference, and while we have occasionally made awards to people outside of the San Francisco Bay Area, the scholarship has generally retained a Bay Area focus. Because this year’s SMOFCon is in San José (December 3-5, 2010 at the Sainte Claire Hotel), making it substantially easier for Bay Area fans with an interest in convention-running to attend, we have decided to not present a SMOFCon Scholarship in 2010.

We will revisit the SMOFCon Scholarship program in 2011.

We have updated our Directors List and posted the minutes of the March 13 meeting. SFSFC’s next regular meeting has been rescheduled to November 20, 2010. See our Meeting Notices page for details.

Due to scheduling conflicts, the “July” meeting of the SFSFC board of directors has been rescheduled to Sunday, August 1.

Minutes of the regular SFSFC board meeting of November 21, 2009 and the officer-election meeting held the same day have been posted on the minutes page.

SFSFC has established its board meeting schedule for 2010. The Board of Directors is scheduled to meet on March 13, July 24, and November 13, 2010. All meetings are on Saturdays, and all meetings are currently scheduled for 11:00 AM Pacific Time. For further details, see our Meeting Schedule.

SFSFC has two memberships available to the SMOFCon 27 convention-running conference in Austin, Texas, December 4-6, 2009. We will sell them for $50 (memberships will cost $75 at the door). To buy one of the memberships, e-mail the SFSFC Treasurer.

Update: The two memberships are now spoken for. Thank you for your interest.