Down Under Fan Fund or Homer Simpson’s Favorite Beer
07. Sep, 2009 
5 Comments
DOWN UNDER FAN FUND 2010
Nominations are now open for the 2010 Down Under Fan Fund a.k.a. DUFF. Prospective candidates will have until January 31st 2010 to file the documents required to have one’s name placed in nomination and added to the ballot. The ballots will be published and distributed in early February, 2010. The voting period will run from February 10th thru March 31st, 2010.
Candidates should file the following documents:
A brief letter stating one’s intent to run for DUFF 2010.
Five letters of nomination, three from North America and two from Australia or New Zealand. E-mailed letters are acceptable.
A 100 word or less platform statement specifying the candidate’s reasons for running and qualifications for becoming the 2010 DUFF delegate.
An entry fee of $25.00USD (which will be added to the current DUFF account).
The duties of the winning candidate will be as follows:
Travel to Australia and attend Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention on September 2-6, 2010 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Visit and get to know as many Australian Science Fiction fans as time will permit.
Become the DUFF administrator for the term running from Aussiecon 4 thru the 51st Australian National Convention (NatCon) to be held in 2012.
Raise funds and maintain an account to be used by the next southbound delegate(s) in 2012.
Publish a trip report covering the time of one’s travels in Australia and attendance at the convention.
Please send all documents and fees to the current DUFF administrators:
Steve and Sue Francis
PO Box 58009
Louisville KY 40268-0009
sjf1138@aol.com
sfsue@aol.com
Sue & Steve sent along this summary at my request. I’ve got no hope of being nominated – but of course it would be nice.
You can find out more about DUFF and TAFF here and here and elsewhere
PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO MY FEED
You have to have the chutzphah to self-nominate for TAFF and DUFF, though doing so because a bunch of people have asked you to saves a lot of possible embarrassment down the line.
It’s not a good thing to try to run without being well-known and desired to be seen by the people where you’d be sent. I.e., if you’re a North American fan who wants to run for DUFF, you’d best have a lot of Australian fan supporters clambering to meet you before you run, rather than trying to quickly explain why they should have heard of you, and should vote for someone who never bothered to be active in Australian fandom until you wanted something from them.
To be sure, this sort of notion has not discouraged a lot of people over the years from running for TAFF or DUFF, it’s merely left a lot of them with egg on their faces, but on occasion some have managed to bull their way through by dint of overwhelming votes on their side of the pond.
This then has more often than not caused a lot of resentment and ill-will all around, rather than the good will that is supposed to be the point of the funds, but it’s fandom, so no surprise involved, really.
I have to note that, having lent my name a number of times over the decades as a nominator, and always read the ballots, though in recent years sometimes with bafflement as to who one or more of the people running is, I’ve never failed to be astonished at just how badly some people can write a platform and then go ahead ad submit it, somehow — beyond all ken — expecting that people will vote for them based on something so utterly incomprehensible or unpersuasive.
Er, “clamoring” to meet you. And technically you don’t self-nominate; what I meant was that you have to either choose to run, or be persuaded to run, and then round up official nominators, per the rules, but no one is going to simply nominate you, write a platform for you, gather the other nominators for you, and so on, without co-ordinating with you to one degree or another.
Like any elected position, there are aspects of politics to it.
More to the point, anyone who runs is taking on the responsibility of being co-Administrator for the next two to three years, which is a damn lot of work and responsibility, and you don’t want to be castigated for falling down on the job.
It’s a heck of a lot easier to just buy a plane ticket on your own. If you run, you’d better really really really be interested in devoting a substantial portion of your life to the Fund for the next several years, and to supporting it as much as you can for as many years thereafter as you can until the day you gafiate.
And that’s assuming you don’t get caught up in one of the idiotic feuds and kerfuffles that have happened over the fund with no small infrequency, and which on more than one occasion have Plunged All Of Fandom Into War.
Incidentally, if you’re going to mention the DUFF race being open, you should mention the TAFF race.
got a fair number of friends over down-under. but not enough, and if I did have the chutzpah to self-nominate, I don’t know enough folks here OR there to stand the proverbial hells chance in a snowball.