From the President’s Desk — February 2025

Happy New Year!

I admit I’ve been remiss in posting from the President’s desk for the last six months!

This winter we’ve been to PawCon and Furcon, and are preparing for Gallifrey One in Los Angeles on President’s Day weekend. We built a set of eerily effective dog-skull masks for the “mythical afterlife” theme at PawCon, and my Rocky the Flying Squirrel got a very effective minor makeover in time for Furcon. I also did a very silly crossplay costume based on Pinky Pie from My Little Pony for a charity show last October (aka “Pinky Pie Pony Club”)

 

All those projects were updated in the build diaries on myTwisted Image website and you can see the process and results https://twistedimage.com/closet/build-diaries/.

Costume-Con 43 Canceled; Annual Meeting will be Virtual on April 12th

By now you have heard the sad news that Costume Con 43 has been canceled. We still need to hold our annual General Membership meeting, so we will be doing so that weekend. On Saturday, April 12, at noon Central time. Registration instructions will be published shortly.
Please do take time to attend the meeting if at all possible; this is your opportunity to elect our board officers and vote on any business before the membership.

I expect the document review committee will have proposed new governing documents for the membership to approve.

That weekend I will also be announcing the recipient(s)* of the 2025 ICG Lifetime Achievement Award.

Nominations (or requests to reactivate a prior year’s nomination) are open until 11:59 PM Pacific time on February 11.

Other Business!

• The Board reviewed and passed our corporate budget for 2025 well in advance of the mandated deadline last month.
• Nominations are also open for board officers, until 11:59PM on March 13, 2025. (see the Standing Rules SR 3)
  Nominations should be sent to icg-president@costume.org
• We still need volunteers for:
  • International Costumer Editor
  • PR committee
  • Tech committee
  • assistant archivists
    None of these roles need be overwhelming with the level of automation we’ve added to our websites and publications

Take advantage of our ICG resources!

The ICG Zoom meeting account and our Google Workspace resources are available to all Chapters, officers and committees.
If you have a Guild-related project underway for which one of those would be useful –reach out to the tech committee so we can see how best to set up access for you!

Reprise: About the ICG Lifetime Achievement Award Process

I posted this last year as well, but it bears repeating, so I’m reposting it.
The gallery of recipients of the LAA (https://costume.org/wp/icg-lifetime-achievement-award/) describes its intent and the rules for nominations, but the actual selection process is somewhat buried in our governing documents (SR 21, to be precise), so in case you’ve ever wondered, here is how it works:

• Administration: the entire LAA selection process is administered by the current President of the International Costumers Guild.
• Nomination: a nomination may be nominated by any member, Chapter or Special Interest Group (SIG) in good standing by sending it to the President.
  Nominations may be submitted at any time, but a nomination for a particular year’s award must be received no later than 60 days before the Annual Meeting.
  Practically, this means that the board and members will receive a reminder from the President roughly 90 days before the meeting of that nomination deadline
• Ballot: The President then assembles a ballot of all the nominated members as well as a packet of any supporting information supplied by the nominators, and distributes it to the electing officers (I am currently in the middle of that process).
• Election: the ballot is distributed to all chapter presidents and the corporate officers. They are asked to indicate their preferences and return them to the President by 30 days before the Annual Meeting. The rules require a majority (not just a plurality), so the vote is done as a ranked choice (instant run-off) ballot. On occasion, it may take several stages of elimination through those ranked choices to achieve a result.
• Award: presuming there is a majority, the name(s)* are supplied to a trusted agent to have the award plaque prepared for the announcement and presentation at Costume-Con. (We then proceed to the annual cat-herding that is attempting to photograph all the LAA recipients on site at the event for a “class picture”)

*The LAA has on occasion been presented to a couple, hence the singular/plural construction.

Hope to see most of you at the virtual meeting!

Kevin Roche
President, International Costumers Guild