Western PA Furry Weekend 2010 Report

[giza]

I drove out to Pittsburgh this past weekend for the Western PA Furry Weekend, a small gathering of furs from the Pittsburgh and surrounding areas. Despite being in existence for 10 years, I never attended before, and since I missed a few cons last spring, I decided to change things up a little and visit this one. I'm glad I did!



I spent most of Friday evening helping out firefoxbc at registration. It was quite a change to work reg at a con where 116 attendees in total is less than the number of folks waiting in the on-site registration line at Anthrocon. In other words, it was rather relaxing and a pleasant change of pace.



Saturday afternoon was the picnic at Fireman's park. I got to spend several hours hanging out and socializing with friends, taking lots of pictures. I ended up bumping into lildobe and chatting about photography. He showed me how to use a flash in outdoor photography to "fill in" shadows cast by the sun, as well as how to tweak my camera settings to properly meter pictures. Here's a picture taken without flash fill and the same picture taken with flash fill. The second picture looks much closer to how the scene looked in person.



After dinner, the charity auction was held, and I ended up winning the pile of feline-related things:



One innovative thing that I saw WPAFW do was to put their all of their programming, plus their sponsor art onto a 2 GB USB stick and include it with their sponsorships. That was a pretty neat idea, and with 1.99 GB left on the USB stick, I now have something that I can use in the future.



Healthwise, my feet held up fine most of the weekend. They started to hurt after being on my feet for about 6 hours straight on Saturday, at which point I sat down for about 10 minutes, then was able to walk around some more. In other words: better than they've been in months!

Naturally, I took lots of pictures. The full archive can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157625097235542/

Overall, I had a rather good time this weekend. I'm going to try and make WPAFW next year. You should, too!

Comments

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Nice to see things are going well in Pittsburgh furry-wise - I knew a bit of the scene back in '90 when I was attending CMU.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

The USB stick notion something that might work for us at AC, perhaps?

Seems like a fun weekend indeedy! :)

[giza.livejournal.com]

We just need to real with duplication. I could write a script or something, but still, that's a lot of manual labor to duplicate ~200 USB sticks.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Might help to get several USB hubs, and do batches. Still a lot of labor, but if you can do at least 20 at a time, it cuts things down a bit.

[kitt3ns.livejournal.com]

Looks like a pretty chill gathering. :3

Wonder if we could get a weekend like that over here.

Also: fursuit-hamster-ball = awesome

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Why is Kasi eating cake off the table? Do I want to know?

[giza.livejournal.com]

You'd have to ask her!

[espilonarge.livejournal.com]

Note to self.

Buy an American version of Pringles and find out if they taste different. *blames Finnish* n.n;

[seeklynx.livejournal.com]

Yeah it is relaxing and a good place to meet people. There is a good chance you will see the same people all weekend.

Glad to hear you like it