Wiscon, SF3, and Moon

The annual meeting of SF³, Wiscon's parent organization, was on October 3. According to the SF³ blog, the meeting passed two resolutions, one saying that "it is the sense of the SF3 Annual Meeting that rescinding Elizabeth Moon’s GoH invitation would best serve WisCon’s goals and community." and the other a vote of confidence (and chocolate) to the troika for their handling of the situation.

This has been mentioned on the Dreamwidth and LJ Wiscon communities; the post at the SF³ blog is closed to comments, but there's an email address for feedback about these statements. Not having been at the meeting, I have no further information.

Changes, but we haven't got the details

The holding company that owns the company I work for has bought a company that makes educational software, and is merging the two. They told us all this at a meeting offsite this morning, an hour after the paperwork was signed.

The meeting was longer on generalities and statements about growth than about specifics. We're promised more detail next week; there's another meeting Monday for just the editorial department, with time for questions. What we know so far is that they want to take content from our existing books and use them for the software stuff, and that the company we're being merged with makes what is supposed to be a supplemental curriculum, broader than our test prep and review material. The new company will have our company name, but the founder and CEO of the other one is, effective immediately, CEO of the combination. They have an office in Jacksonville, and the plan is to keep that, our New York office, and the Massachusetts warehouse space more or less as is. The CEO is going to be spending a lot of time flying back and forth.

Other than that, they were talking about growth and opportunity and having stuff out in the cloud, and that there will be no layoffs. And about working hard and learning new skills, all of that unspecified. I am hoping that this means they will scuttle the dubious-looking still-in-development content management system and use whatever the other side already has and is using. Several days ago we were told that we (editorial) would all be put into groups for training on that, but no schedule has been announced yet, and I suspect it may not be. One can hope.

(I also have a leak in my kitchen sink; I noticed water on the floor this morning, and mopped some of it up before dashing out to the meeting this morning, but neither I nor cattitude identified the cause, and we probably won't be able to get the super in until Monday.)