08 Nov 2008, Posted by Cat in News, 4 Comments. Tagged guff

so what the hell is GUFF anyway?

GUFF is the Get Up-and-over Fan Fund or the Going Under Fan Fund, depending on which way you’re going.

GUFF assists fans from Europe and Australasia to form closer links, by providing funds for well-known fans from one part of the world to attend a major science fiction convention in the other.

The GUFF winners are selected by popular vote amongst fans, after a nomination process. Winners are required to attend a specified convention in the host country, and become administrators until the next winner from their area takes over. (thanx to Eric Lindsay for info)

You gotta pay ten dollars donation to vote in GUFF and this year my money went to the girliejones  campaign. She blogs about why she’s running for GUFF over here. I’ll tell you why I think she’s the best possible person to represent Aussie spec fic fandom at Eastercon UK 2009:

Communities such as ours are often propped up by the hard yakka of select individuals. People who elect to be leaders rather than passengers, service providers rather than recipients. girliejones  is one of those people. She’s only been on the scene for a few years but already she has more irons in the fire (and has won more awards) than it takes most dedicated groups ten years to accomplish. There’s the AsIf reviews site, The Last Short Story Project, Twelfth Planet Press which incorporates New Ceres and Shiny. GJ gets involved. She puts her money where her mouth is and has brought a level of professionalism to Aussie small press that it had been sorely lacking for some time. But she’s not just all about publishing. GJ is a networker, a fluid communicator, a connector. She takes this community seriously and gives it everything she’s got. She reads everything, pays attention to what’s going on in the field. And she is proficient in current communication technology — a factor not to be overlooked in today’s noisy, media driven, attention drawing, time draining world. People like girliejones  enhance, enliven, envigorate and grow communities. They don’t sit around to watch what happens, they make things happen.

Vote for GJ. Details of how to vote can be found here.