Anthrocon report

As promised, here is my writeup of Anthrocon. I didn't get to do too much at this con, since I spent most of my time working in Con Ops. If you haven't already, go read Can't Sleep Con Will Eat Me. It's true. ALL of it!

Wednesday: Drove over to the hotel from my office in Center City Philly to collect jbadger, Algernon, and Dragonwolf, who were crashing at my place that night. Along the way I saw film2edit, snowkitty, and Galen Wolffit. Headed back to my place and crashed sometime after midnight.

Thursday: Got to the hotel and spent a few hours working in Con Ops. Around 2, I went to get my room, then back to Con Ops to relieve preyfar. Along the way, taral, phildafeline, and Kipaji arrived. mach arrived, and I went to the Thursday evening mixer. I only had one drink (what's wrong with me?), and bumped into Blaze and tjcoyote, who lifted me off my feet in a bone-crushing hug. Played a little Furry UNO and went to bed.

Friday: Slept in a little, then spent an hour or 2 in Con Ops. Found out that the register for the Con Store lost all of its programming that I spent an hour or two setting up the previous week. Yay. Went to a panel but got pulled out twice to fix things that broke. Fun. Somewhere in there Taral started reprogramming the cash register. Later in the afternoon, Dubwana dropped by and made a surprise visit to Mach. Heehee. :-) Turned out that there was a scheduling SNAFU, and while the schedule only said we had to be open until 6, it was more like 11 because we had to wait for registration to close, which was after 10. Grr. Closed Con Ops around 11.

Saturday: Slept VERY poorly the night before because I was stressed out over some things, and had to get up early to open up the Ops Office. Those furs who saw me that day remember that I looked like crap, and that was one of the reasons why. That, and the fact that I couldn't eat much food because I was so stressed out. I was a nervous (and hungry/tired) wreck. In the afternoon, Cheetah had trouble getting to the airport, so I drove him there. For the second Anthrocon in a row, interestingly enough. Registration closed at 6, so we were able to close Con Ops around 7. I was totally drained and didn't want to do anything else that night, so I went back to my room and talked with Taral for a few hours about things. We ordered some pizza and crashed around midnight.

Sunday: Slept much better the previous night, got up and opened up Con Ops again. As I was getting the hang of running the Ops office, Sunday was fairly uneventful. I had off in the afternoon, so I wandered around a little, and bumped into Herbie Hammil, and chatted with him briefly. He had good things to say about the con, which made me feel really good. Then I went into the Dealers' Room (for the first time that con), stopped by Plan 9's table and bought all 3 Bastard Operator From Hell Books. I also visited Terry Wessner and bought a few issues of Fang, Claw, and Steel, a nice publication that has art and stories about lycanthropes. I attended the closing ceremonies and saw Kagemushi get a mohawk and points get his beard shaved. Afterward, I went back to Con Ops, closed it up around 7, and went to the staff dinner. Ah, real food! After that, I promised Taral I'd take him to see Reign of Fire and did so. That movie sucked. The dragons should be given Emmys and the human actors should be eaten by the dragons! Came back to the room and crashed.

Monday: Got up and checked out of the hotel room. Taral took a shuttle off to the airport. I stayed around for the post-con meeting with the Board members and hotel staff. Kage and I returned the truck that he had rented for the con, and whaddya know, the place was less than a mile away from I live! Small world. Came back to the hotel and had a late lunch with Kage and a few other staff members who were still around. After lunch, it was about 4 PM, and there wasn't much left to do, so I headed for home.

Final thoughts: From the perspective of a staff member, this was the best Anthrocon ever. We had record attendence, kept things pretty well organized, and dealt with the various crises that came up. Our security was handled by Dorsai Irregulars, and they rocked. I hope we have them again next year. From a personal perspective, it was my worst con ever. Partly it was because of my foot, partly from spending so much time in Con Ops, and partly because of other things I got stressed out over during the con. However, I'm going to use what I learned this year and try to make things go better next year.

Oh, my thoughts about the drug thing? It's been interesting watching peoples' reactions to this, because I know something that most furs don't: this has happened before. Not with Anthrocon, but there was another convention where an individual brought drugs, screwed up and got caught with them, and was asked not to return to that convention. Why doesn't anyone know about that incident? The reason is that the individual involved admitted that he screwed up, and accepted his punishment; he didn't proceed to whine and bitch and moan about it. This individual knows who he is, and I have quite a bit of respect for him for owing up to his mistake.