Although I had attended the SFWA Nebula Conference previously as a virtual attendee, 2025 was the first year I went to the face-to-face conference. For me, it was the capstone of a three-week-long road trip with my son. We attended a wedding, then visited my brother for week, and finally continued onto the Nebulas in Kansas City. We had a great time.
Before the conference, the SFWA Board had a two-day retreat to talk about strategic planning. This has been a priority of mine as a new board member. Until the Nebulas, we’d been largely in crisis management mode, after the loss of the leadership and staff last summer. This retreat gave us the opportunity to dedicate enough time for some extended discussions about where we think the organization should go
It was also my first opportunity to meet most of the principals of SFWA. I had only met one of the other board members previously, other than via Zoom. Zoom is great for meetings, but it doesn’t provide much opportunity for side-conversations. I also got to meet the staff, including the new executive director that we just hired. More about that below
Note: this is not any kind of official report and represents only my personal impressions of what we did over the two days of meetings.
We began broadly by reviewing SFWA’s mission statement. Then we cast a broad net and began to consider how to more concisely sum up what we want SFWA to be. After an hour and a half, we had a working statement to use as the basis for further discussion to start developing our strategic plan.
SFWA does a lot of things. From the estates and legacy program to the writing dates. From the givers grant to the emergency medical fund. From the contract committee to griefcom. We tried to list out all of the programs that SFWA currently manages. It’s a long list. Then we tried to put the activities in categories: development, membership, communications, internal support, and programming. Finally, we tried to develop a set of priorities to help us understand what we want to accomplish in the coming year.
In the afternoon, we focused primarily on discussing the membership program, so we could talk about the other aspects (development, communications, and internal support) with the staff that would be attending the following day. We identified three areas to prioritize and then split up into breakout groups to develop plans for each of the three areas with action steps. After we shared out the results, we adjourned for the day.
On the second day, the board met again, this time together with all of the staff and volunteers for introductions. Unlike the Board, where we had been meeting via Zoom, I mostly hadn’t interacted with others except via email or Discord, so it was nice to be able to associate a face with a name. We had a brief discussion with the new executive director to describe what we had accomplished during the strategic planning. Finally, we had a brief official board meeting and, among other things, voted to accept a proposal for the proposal for the location of next year’s Nebula conference.
When I got home after the conference, I had a one-on-one onboarding meeting with the new executive director. I had an opportunity to discuss what my goals are for SFWA. We had a frank discussion where I had a chance to share my perspective. I’m really impressed by her acumen and approach. I think she’s going to be a great addition to the organization.
I’m very encouraged for the coming year. We developed some good, concrete plans for improving the organization. We are fully staffed with great people. The leadership team looks to be stable for the coming year with fantastic new people coming in board in July. I think we have successfully weathered the crisis and the sky’s the limit going forward.
I’ve already signed up to attend the Nebula Conference in 2026. It’s going to be in the Chicago area. Through June 30, early bird registration is available at a reduced rate. Since it’s in the midwest, I can probably combine it with a visit to my brother again. I hope to see you next year in Chicago!
