AFF 2007 Con Report
I'm going to make this entry public, just because... well... it's pretty much public information anyway, and I do want people who aren't on my friends list to be able to view the entry, too.
Anyway, without further ado, here's my uber-long AFF 2007 Con Report.
Well, I've been trying to figure out how to go about doing a con report for AFF for the last several days. The problem is I was so tired and a bit dazed throughout most of the con, so it's mostly a blur to me. A happy blur, but a blur nonetheless.
So, I guess I'll just try to hit some of the highlights throughout the days-- I apologize if I leave anyone out in this summary.
Wednesday before the con (28th, I believe), Teeka and I had hoped to leave fairly soon after I got home from work so we could meet up with Moorcat, Zinnthra, and Lupercus who were already in Spokane. I think we were both already a little panicked at the prospect of helping to run a con (which none of us on con staff had had any experience with), so we had a whole bunch of last-minute things to take care of, and didn't end up getting out of the house at 10:30pm. After arriving at the hotel and checking in, we headed over to the Satellite Diner for some food at about 1:30am (since we hadn't had dinner), and discovered the awesomeness of this quintessential late-night greasy spoon. Teeka in particular fell instantly in love with their mozarella cheese sticks.
Thursday morning, after allowing ourselves to sleep in for a bit, I headed over to a local TV sales shop to rent out a VGA-compatible projector which was going to be used for various events the rest of the weekend. In the mean time, Moorcat and Lupercus, along with a squad of volunteers (Tsunari, Leo Drake, and Moorcat's friend Bob who was also the DJ for the dance) dropped off their first load of con supplies at the hotel and went back to the storage unit for another load. When I got back to the hotel, I met up with Jeff (the guy working for the hotel whose job it was to keep us happy throughout the event). My first impression was that this guy was going to be a pain to work with; However he turned out to be a great help in the end, doing spur-of-the-moment changes and listening to our requirements/demands despite our obvious naivety when it comes to running events. One thing I did realize throughout the weekend is that we need to do a more consistent job of communicating with the hotel-- there were a couple times where Jeff had assumed one thing based on a conversation with Moorcat, and I ended up contradicting that based on discussion we'd had as staff.
Anyway, eventually the set-up crew got back from the storage unit with (mostly) art show panels and we got to work setting up that room. It was kind of funny-- Our drawing of the room set-up assumed the panels would be set up in rows, and any intersections of rows of panels would be at 90-degrees. It turns out the panels as given to us by the former Conifur staff (thank you!) are a lot more stable if the rows zig-zag. So... there was a little confusion at first how we were going to set things up. We suffered the "too many cooks in the kitchen" problem for a bit, then I think everyone but Leo Drake and I left the room to go do something else, and Leo had a great idea on how to set up the room. We were mostly done by the time everyone came back. We were short a couple of panels, so a few went off to get those while some of us stayed at the hotel and made sure the registration desk, dealer's room and main event theater were set up and ready to go.
There was surprisingly little set-up to do on the day before the con, and I think next time if I end up being the volunteer coordinator (I hope not-- I'm a computer geek! And I don't enjoy Human Resource-type positions that much.), I think we could do it with fewer people. Still, it was great to see the turn-out of those eager to help.
Thursday afternoon I picked up Wolf Nymph and her boyfriend (Preston) from the Spokane airport and later that evening we all went to our Guest of Honor Dinner at a nearby restaurant called the Europa. They have great italian food, and if I'm ever in the Spokane area around dinner time again, they're definitely an option. I think next year we'll have to be a bit more explicit about the GoH dinner being for the GoH's party, staff, and sponsors/super-sponsors only (and issue tickets)-- while it's great to have people wanting to help out, it became apparent we hadn't budgeted for the number of people wanting to go, so there was an awkward moment when I had to tell about half the guests they were going to have to pay their own way. I don't like doing that sort of thing, so hopefully next time we can do that event a little better.
Friday was the first official day of the con. After the stress and tiredness from setting up the previous day, I couldn't sleep in much. Not that I wanted too-- I was eager to see who had showed up the previous evening. Also, Fire had come down with something nasty the day before the con, so I was preparing to take over her role for the most part in running/tending the Dealers' Den. It didn't take long to help Kiefer set up the registration desk area, nor to read through Fire's paperwork for running the Dealer's Den. (Thank you SO much by the way, Fire and Kiefer-- if it weren't for your organization, I don't think the nuts-and-bolts aspects of the con would have gone nearly as smoothly!) So, since we were ready to go anyway, we went ahead and started processing registrations as well as allowing dealers to set up in the dealers' den. Note for next time: When you only have about 10 dealers showing up on the first day, it doesn't take 3 hours to get them all through dealer reg. and get their tables set up. XD
Shortly after a very brief "Welcome to the Con" session by our illustrious leader and those staffers who weren't tied to their post, Wolf People showed up with their wolf, ready to give their presentation. Since they wanted to show both a powerpoint and video during their panel, I dashed over there and ran the (that is to say, my) computer for them. Things went off without a hitch, and I think everyone who was there enjoyed the presentation, and the chance to associate with Mohawk-- the wolf they brought in.
After that, the time came to open the Dealers' Den to the general con attendees, so things got a little hectic in the dealers' den. Of course, I *did* take advantage of the fact that I was there early in order to get my name in first with a lot of the artists there for badge commissions and whatnot. I think I ended up with about a dozen new badges by the end of the con, and I think they're all great (I'll post them later today after I post this). That's the secret: If you want to make sure you get in first in line for the artists, be on staff! XD
Um... I forget exactly what happened after that. I spent a good portion of the time just tending the AFF support table in the dealers' den, chatting with old friends and meeting new. I especially appreciated the chance to get to know Noriko Miyagami (Kacey Miyagami's wife) and their friend Jeremy. They apparently have had a lot of experience being dealers' den staff at Further Confusion. And while AFF's dealers's den is a tiny fraction of the size of FC's, they had a bunch of great suggestions and stories from working at FC. At points throughout the con, we ended up drafting Noriko into dealers' den shepherding duty as I and other staffers had to run off to do various things throughout the con. Thank you so much for that, Noriko! I know I'd seen Noriko at previous cons (she's got such a stunning appearance, it's hard *not* to notice her), and it was great to have the chance to get to know her a lot better at AFF.
I forget exactly where we ate dinner and with whom on Friday evening... I think it was at the Satellite Diner (we frequented the place a lot throughout the con because it's so convenient and the food was fantastic). I know I didn't get to bed nearly as early as I would have liked...
Anyway, Saturday morning I had to get up especially early to meet Jeff to set up and run the Cartoons and Cereal event. I was glad Jeff took my suggestion to double the amount of cereal he bought for the event-- it turns out we had enough for everyone without too many leftovers. The cartoon selection came from yours-truly's video library (which was one of the things I was packing on Wednesday that got us off to a late start). Most of the cartoons I showed were from the late 80's early-90's genre, with a couple older and newer ones thrown in. Next time I'll have to see if I can locate some Thudercats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or He-man. Because nothing bolsters the appetite quite like seeing Skeletor in a speedo.
Again, things get hazy for me shortly thereafter as the con got under-way full-force. We had a fairly full dealers' den on Saturday, and things were fairly active in that room for most of the day. (Which is not bad considering we only had 14 tables in there.) I understand that most of the artists did pretty well with sales, especially considering how small our con is compared to the giants. I do hope most of them felt it was worth their while to get a table and will want to do it again next year.
Throughout the day I bounced around a lot between the Dealers' Den, Registration Table, and Art Show. I was happy also to see we got some really awesome art in the show, and a good portion of it ended up selling. When we first started talking about doing this con and having an art show in it, I didn't expect anything to get enough bids to warrant it going to the live auction. I was happily proven wrong as two of the pieces (both Kacey Miyagami's work) did.
Saturday evening, a bunch of us hastily pulled together a group of dinner-goers and vehicles and caravanned the 6-7 blocks to a nearby Chili's. They were surprisingly able to seat us fairly quickly (in three groups of 4 all seated within conversation distance). I was lucky enough to be at the girl-artists' table with Teeka, Marci McAdam, and Foxy Fennec. I'd never had the chance to socialize much with Marci (when she's working in the dealers' den she seems so involved in her work and so professional I would feel awkward just starting up a small-talk conversation). And actually-- I think Marci was fairly surprised that she didn't have a huge possie of fan-boys and -girls following her around the con that she felt a little out of place. I do hope we'll be able to correct that in future years.
Toward the end of dinner, someone pulled out a pen and applied it to a napkin, and a moment later a full-scale Chili's Art Jam was underway. I think Wicked Sairah, Marci, Teeka, and Foxy ended up drawing together on 3 napkins before we were shooed out of there by Chili's staff... I'll have to get Teeka to post a link to scans of the napkins in her journal soon.
Right after dinner, Teeka and I headed down to the dance for a few minutes to see how things were going. I was only there for about 15 minutes (and helped get Jeff and a few others to move the headless lounge to a closet that was much closer to the dance itself), but what I heard sounded fine and it looked like people were having a lot of fun. The $70 in dance light rentals we spent seem to have gone a long way. I understand there were some complaints about the quality of the music selection (or, at least, the relevance to the con demographic). We'll try to get some stuff more relevant to our audience's taste next year, eh. (I *do* want to thank the DJ, Bob, for coming out and doing it for us though-- he also helped a lot with setting up and tearing down the art show and other rooms before and after the con.)
After that, most of the people from dinner came up to our room to hang, art-jam, and socialize. We put on Pirates of the Caribbean II and shortly thereafter Arcanix gave me the best back massage I think I've ever had. People who seem like they should know always tell me my back is always really tense and full of knots. I imagine with the stress of the con, it was doubly-so for me. But man did he do a good job-- my back felt all warm and glowing for about a half hour afterward.
Sunday morning we actually got to sleep in for a little while, which was exceedingly nice. Sunday was actually a pretty slow day for us, as the con was winding down, and there were only a few events scheduled for the day. I got to help Teeka out with the art auction, and then afterward when we realized we had almost no idea how to run a benefit auction, Samwise came through with flying colors and devised a system in the spur of the moment which ended up working very well. At the benefit auction itself, we sold a large portion of the plushies that Conifur had donated to us along with the rest of their equipment, and ended up making about $160. This is not much considering the total cost of the con (All Fur Fun was the benefactor this year-- with the idea that we wanted to raise some money to help us be able to hold a con next year. Next year we'll probably have a real charity for the event). Next year we'll also put a shout out for donations for the charity auction well in advance of the con, so we don't just have second-hand plushies and some last-minute donated art to sell.
After that I attended the feedback session where we got to thank everyone for coming out to our little shin-dig. As has been stated elsewhere, All Fur Fun almost didn't happen because we had a hard time finding a hotel we could afford that would meet our needs (but our fearless leader didn't give up, and came through with a hotel that worked pretty well for us). Also, we decided from the start that we'd be happy with 40 people attending, and would hope for 50-60. We got 110 in the end, which I think greatly exceeded anything we'd let ourselves hope for.
I was surprised at the feedback session that there weren't more complaints about how we ran the show, or about the hotel. We did come away with a few suggestions for how we can improve next year (which we're taking very seriously), but overall the message we got was, "We love you guys! You did a great job! And we're coming back next year, so you'd better hold another AFF in 2008!" Let me tell you-- with as much work as we put into it, with as much as we stressed over it and worked hard to make it happen... that was about the best thank-you we could have received!
And that was the official end of the con. Those of us on staff and a few volunteers went ahead and started tearing down the art show and other rooms to turn things back over to the hotel. Once we were done with that, a group of us headed over to Sushi.com and had a meal there. Apparently a few people got sick from the tuna afterward, but otherwise the food was good. I was especially happy I got the chance to hang out with Phil Geusz for most of the evening and chat. He's really an awesome person and a stellar writer-- and he's lived a life with more interesting experiences than 10 average people will ever experience in their lives. We talked for hours about all kinds of stuff, being interrupted here or there to say goodbye to friends who were heading home or Teeka doing her patented and trademarked "Annoyingly cute, and cutely annoying" (tm) thing. Later a bunch of us went over to the Satellite for a late-night snack... then Arcanix and Vega Fox came up to our room to hang out.... and then all too soon we went to bed, and the con experience was pretty much over.
A couple of post-con thoughts:
When Teeka first came to me with the idea she and Moorcat had dreamed up of doing a furry convention in the Spokane area (in the wake of FFNW's cancellation), I never would have thought that just 8 months later we would actually be holding the event itself, nor that it would have been such a smashing success. We had a few very uncertain times (eg. when looking for a candidate hotel), but in the end were able to work things out. It was really gratifying to me to see just how well the staff Teeka and Moorcat were able to recruit worked together, helped each-other out when someone got over-burdened, and otherwise came together as a team (in the ideal way they always mean things to happen in those work-related seminars failing companies spend a lot of money sending their disgruntled employees to).
In the end, though, we definitely couldn't have done it if it weren't for our attendees-- they put enough faith in our efforts to take a chance and come out to Spokane for a weekend of furry fun and frolicking. A con is not a con if people don't show up. And what a time we all had!
I'd also want to thank all the volunteers who came to put in time and energy into seeing the con happen. I know we over-estimated the amount of help we'd need this year, and I apologize for that (I'm rather inexperienced in coordinating volunteers), but do know that we really appreciate your willingness to help, even if we didn't always have an interesting job for you to do.
So... next year? Hmmm... well, to be honest, I don't think many of us StAFFers had put a whole lot of thought into next year's AFF convention before last week. We just didn't let ourselves hope. But now the overwhelming thought is that we definitely, definitely are going to make it happen next year, too!
I thought we'd get a chance to take a break for a few weeks and let things calm down for a while... but we've got a lot of paperwork to go through, checks to send to artists, taxes to file, and a lot of other busy-work. Not to mention the fact that we've already started making plans for AFF 2008. Our convention planners' mailing list is almost as busy now as it was in the week before the con!
Speaking of which-- if you have suggestions for AFF 2008 and haven't had a chance to tell them to us yet, please do so! Probably the most reliable way to reach us is to either leave a message on the AFF Forum or use the Contact Us page on our web site.
We're really excited, eh! And we hope to see you all at All Fur Fun 2008!
Anyway, without further ado, here's my uber-long AFF 2007 Con Report.
Well, I've been trying to figure out how to go about doing a con report for AFF for the last several days. The problem is I was so tired and a bit dazed throughout most of the con, so it's mostly a blur to me. A happy blur, but a blur nonetheless.
So, I guess I'll just try to hit some of the highlights throughout the days-- I apologize if I leave anyone out in this summary.
Wednesday before the con (28th, I believe), Teeka and I had hoped to leave fairly soon after I got home from work so we could meet up with Moorcat, Zinnthra, and Lupercus who were already in Spokane. I think we were both already a little panicked at the prospect of helping to run a con (which none of us on con staff had had any experience with), so we had a whole bunch of last-minute things to take care of, and didn't end up getting out of the house at 10:30pm. After arriving at the hotel and checking in, we headed over to the Satellite Diner for some food at about 1:30am (since we hadn't had dinner), and discovered the awesomeness of this quintessential late-night greasy spoon. Teeka in particular fell instantly in love with their mozarella cheese sticks.
Thursday morning, after allowing ourselves to sleep in for a bit, I headed over to a local TV sales shop to rent out a VGA-compatible projector which was going to be used for various events the rest of the weekend. In the mean time, Moorcat and Lupercus, along with a squad of volunteers (Tsunari, Leo Drake, and Moorcat's friend Bob who was also the DJ for the dance) dropped off their first load of con supplies at the hotel and went back to the storage unit for another load. When I got back to the hotel, I met up with Jeff (the guy working for the hotel whose job it was to keep us happy throughout the event). My first impression was that this guy was going to be a pain to work with; However he turned out to be a great help in the end, doing spur-of-the-moment changes and listening to our requirements/demands despite our obvious naivety when it comes to running events. One thing I did realize throughout the weekend is that we need to do a more consistent job of communicating with the hotel-- there were a couple times where Jeff had assumed one thing based on a conversation with Moorcat, and I ended up contradicting that based on discussion we'd had as staff.
Anyway, eventually the set-up crew got back from the storage unit with (mostly) art show panels and we got to work setting up that room. It was kind of funny-- Our drawing of the room set-up assumed the panels would be set up in rows, and any intersections of rows of panels would be at 90-degrees. It turns out the panels as given to us by the former Conifur staff (thank you!) are a lot more stable if the rows zig-zag. So... there was a little confusion at first how we were going to set things up. We suffered the "too many cooks in the kitchen" problem for a bit, then I think everyone but Leo Drake and I left the room to go do something else, and Leo had a great idea on how to set up the room. We were mostly done by the time everyone came back. We were short a couple of panels, so a few went off to get those while some of us stayed at the hotel and made sure the registration desk, dealer's room and main event theater were set up and ready to go.
There was surprisingly little set-up to do on the day before the con, and I think next time if I end up being the volunteer coordinator (I hope not-- I'm a computer geek! And I don't enjoy Human Resource-type positions that much.), I think we could do it with fewer people. Still, it was great to see the turn-out of those eager to help.
Thursday afternoon I picked up Wolf Nymph and her boyfriend (Preston) from the Spokane airport and later that evening we all went to our Guest of Honor Dinner at a nearby restaurant called the Europa. They have great italian food, and if I'm ever in the Spokane area around dinner time again, they're definitely an option. I think next year we'll have to be a bit more explicit about the GoH dinner being for the GoH's party, staff, and sponsors/super-sponsors only (and issue tickets)-- while it's great to have people wanting to help out, it became apparent we hadn't budgeted for the number of people wanting to go, so there was an awkward moment when I had to tell about half the guests they were going to have to pay their own way. I don't like doing that sort of thing, so hopefully next time we can do that event a little better.
Friday was the first official day of the con. After the stress and tiredness from setting up the previous day, I couldn't sleep in much. Not that I wanted too-- I was eager to see who had showed up the previous evening. Also, Fire had come down with something nasty the day before the con, so I was preparing to take over her role for the most part in running/tending the Dealers' Den. It didn't take long to help Kiefer set up the registration desk area, nor to read through Fire's paperwork for running the Dealer's Den. (Thank you SO much by the way, Fire and Kiefer-- if it weren't for your organization, I don't think the nuts-and-bolts aspects of the con would have gone nearly as smoothly!) So, since we were ready to go anyway, we went ahead and started processing registrations as well as allowing dealers to set up in the dealers' den. Note for next time: When you only have about 10 dealers showing up on the first day, it doesn't take 3 hours to get them all through dealer reg. and get their tables set up. XD
Shortly after a very brief "Welcome to the Con" session by our illustrious leader and those staffers who weren't tied to their post, Wolf People showed up with their wolf, ready to give their presentation. Since they wanted to show both a powerpoint and video during their panel, I dashed over there and ran the (that is to say, my) computer for them. Things went off without a hitch, and I think everyone who was there enjoyed the presentation, and the chance to associate with Mohawk-- the wolf they brought in.
After that, the time came to open the Dealers' Den to the general con attendees, so things got a little hectic in the dealers' den. Of course, I *did* take advantage of the fact that I was there early in order to get my name in first with a lot of the artists there for badge commissions and whatnot. I think I ended up with about a dozen new badges by the end of the con, and I think they're all great (I'll post them later today after I post this). That's the secret: If you want to make sure you get in first in line for the artists, be on staff! XD
Um... I forget exactly what happened after that. I spent a good portion of the time just tending the AFF support table in the dealers' den, chatting with old friends and meeting new. I especially appreciated the chance to get to know Noriko Miyagami (Kacey Miyagami's wife) and their friend Jeremy. They apparently have had a lot of experience being dealers' den staff at Further Confusion. And while AFF's dealers's den is a tiny fraction of the size of FC's, they had a bunch of great suggestions and stories from working at FC. At points throughout the con, we ended up drafting Noriko into dealers' den shepherding duty as I and other staffers had to run off to do various things throughout the con. Thank you so much for that, Noriko! I know I'd seen Noriko at previous cons (she's got such a stunning appearance, it's hard *not* to notice her), and it was great to have the chance to get to know her a lot better at AFF.
I forget exactly where we ate dinner and with whom on Friday evening... I think it was at the Satellite Diner (we frequented the place a lot throughout the con because it's so convenient and the food was fantastic). I know I didn't get to bed nearly as early as I would have liked...
Anyway, Saturday morning I had to get up especially early to meet Jeff to set up and run the Cartoons and Cereal event. I was glad Jeff took my suggestion to double the amount of cereal he bought for the event-- it turns out we had enough for everyone without too many leftovers. The cartoon selection came from yours-truly's video library (which was one of the things I was packing on Wednesday that got us off to a late start). Most of the cartoons I showed were from the late 80's early-90's genre, with a couple older and newer ones thrown in. Next time I'll have to see if I can locate some Thudercats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or He-man. Because nothing bolsters the appetite quite like seeing Skeletor in a speedo.
Again, things get hazy for me shortly thereafter as the con got under-way full-force. We had a fairly full dealers' den on Saturday, and things were fairly active in that room for most of the day. (Which is not bad considering we only had 14 tables in there.) I understand that most of the artists did pretty well with sales, especially considering how small our con is compared to the giants. I do hope most of them felt it was worth their while to get a table and will want to do it again next year.
Throughout the day I bounced around a lot between the Dealers' Den, Registration Table, and Art Show. I was happy also to see we got some really awesome art in the show, and a good portion of it ended up selling. When we first started talking about doing this con and having an art show in it, I didn't expect anything to get enough bids to warrant it going to the live auction. I was happily proven wrong as two of the pieces (both Kacey Miyagami's work) did.
Saturday evening, a bunch of us hastily pulled together a group of dinner-goers and vehicles and caravanned the 6-7 blocks to a nearby Chili's. They were surprisingly able to seat us fairly quickly (in three groups of 4 all seated within conversation distance). I was lucky enough to be at the girl-artists' table with Teeka, Marci McAdam, and Foxy Fennec. I'd never had the chance to socialize much with Marci (when she's working in the dealers' den she seems so involved in her work and so professional I would feel awkward just starting up a small-talk conversation). And actually-- I think Marci was fairly surprised that she didn't have a huge possie of fan-boys and -girls following her around the con that she felt a little out of place. I do hope we'll be able to correct that in future years.
Toward the end of dinner, someone pulled out a pen and applied it to a napkin, and a moment later a full-scale Chili's Art Jam was underway. I think Wicked Sairah, Marci, Teeka, and Foxy ended up drawing together on 3 napkins before we were shooed out of there by Chili's staff... I'll have to get Teeka to post a link to scans of the napkins in her journal soon.
Right after dinner, Teeka and I headed down to the dance for a few minutes to see how things were going. I was only there for about 15 minutes (and helped get Jeff and a few others to move the headless lounge to a closet that was much closer to the dance itself), but what I heard sounded fine and it looked like people were having a lot of fun. The $70 in dance light rentals we spent seem to have gone a long way. I understand there were some complaints about the quality of the music selection (or, at least, the relevance to the con demographic). We'll try to get some stuff more relevant to our audience's taste next year, eh. (I *do* want to thank the DJ, Bob, for coming out and doing it for us though-- he also helped a lot with setting up and tearing down the art show and other rooms before and after the con.)
After that, most of the people from dinner came up to our room to hang, art-jam, and socialize. We put on Pirates of the Caribbean II and shortly thereafter Arcanix gave me the best back massage I think I've ever had. People who seem like they should know always tell me my back is always really tense and full of knots. I imagine with the stress of the con, it was doubly-so for me. But man did he do a good job-- my back felt all warm and glowing for about a half hour afterward.
Sunday morning we actually got to sleep in for a little while, which was exceedingly nice. Sunday was actually a pretty slow day for us, as the con was winding down, and there were only a few events scheduled for the day. I got to help Teeka out with the art auction, and then afterward when we realized we had almost no idea how to run a benefit auction, Samwise came through with flying colors and devised a system in the spur of the moment which ended up working very well. At the benefit auction itself, we sold a large portion of the plushies that Conifur had donated to us along with the rest of their equipment, and ended up making about $160. This is not much considering the total cost of the con (All Fur Fun was the benefactor this year-- with the idea that we wanted to raise some money to help us be able to hold a con next year. Next year we'll probably have a real charity for the event). Next year we'll also put a shout out for donations for the charity auction well in advance of the con, so we don't just have second-hand plushies and some last-minute donated art to sell.
After that I attended the feedback session where we got to thank everyone for coming out to our little shin-dig. As has been stated elsewhere, All Fur Fun almost didn't happen because we had a hard time finding a hotel we could afford that would meet our needs (but our fearless leader didn't give up, and came through with a hotel that worked pretty well for us). Also, we decided from the start that we'd be happy with 40 people attending, and would hope for 50-60. We got 110 in the end, which I think greatly exceeded anything we'd let ourselves hope for.
I was surprised at the feedback session that there weren't more complaints about how we ran the show, or about the hotel. We did come away with a few suggestions for how we can improve next year (which we're taking very seriously), but overall the message we got was, "We love you guys! You did a great job! And we're coming back next year, so you'd better hold another AFF in 2008!" Let me tell you-- with as much work as we put into it, with as much as we stressed over it and worked hard to make it happen... that was about the best thank-you we could have received!
And that was the official end of the con. Those of us on staff and a few volunteers went ahead and started tearing down the art show and other rooms to turn things back over to the hotel. Once we were done with that, a group of us headed over to Sushi.com and had a meal there. Apparently a few people got sick from the tuna afterward, but otherwise the food was good. I was especially happy I got the chance to hang out with Phil Geusz for most of the evening and chat. He's really an awesome person and a stellar writer-- and he's lived a life with more interesting experiences than 10 average people will ever experience in their lives. We talked for hours about all kinds of stuff, being interrupted here or there to say goodbye to friends who were heading home or Teeka doing her patented and trademarked "Annoyingly cute, and cutely annoying" (tm) thing. Later a bunch of us went over to the Satellite for a late-night snack... then Arcanix and Vega Fox came up to our room to hang out.... and then all too soon we went to bed, and the con experience was pretty much over.
A couple of post-con thoughts:
When Teeka first came to me with the idea she and Moorcat had dreamed up of doing a furry convention in the Spokane area (in the wake of FFNW's cancellation), I never would have thought that just 8 months later we would actually be holding the event itself, nor that it would have been such a smashing success. We had a few very uncertain times (eg. when looking for a candidate hotel), but in the end were able to work things out. It was really gratifying to me to see just how well the staff Teeka and Moorcat were able to recruit worked together, helped each-other out when someone got over-burdened, and otherwise came together as a team (in the ideal way they always mean things to happen in those work-related seminars failing companies spend a lot of money sending their disgruntled employees to).
In the end, though, we definitely couldn't have done it if it weren't for our attendees-- they put enough faith in our efforts to take a chance and come out to Spokane for a weekend of furry fun and frolicking. A con is not a con if people don't show up. And what a time we all had!
I'd also want to thank all the volunteers who came to put in time and energy into seeing the con happen. I know we over-estimated the amount of help we'd need this year, and I apologize for that (I'm rather inexperienced in coordinating volunteers), but do know that we really appreciate your willingness to help, even if we didn't always have an interesting job for you to do.
So... next year? Hmmm... well, to be honest, I don't think many of us StAFFers had put a whole lot of thought into next year's AFF convention before last week. We just didn't let ourselves hope. But now the overwhelming thought is that we definitely, definitely are going to make it happen next year, too!
I thought we'd get a chance to take a break for a few weeks and let things calm down for a while... but we've got a lot of paperwork to go through, checks to send to artists, taxes to file, and a lot of other busy-work. Not to mention the fact that we've already started making plans for AFF 2008. Our convention planners' mailing list is almost as busy now as it was in the week before the con!
Speaking of which-- if you have suggestions for AFF 2008 and haven't had a chance to tell them to us yet, please do so! Probably the most reliable way to reach us is to either leave a message on the AFF Forum or use the Contact Us page on our web site.
We're really excited, eh! And we hope to see you all at All Fur Fun 2008!