I am still exhausted since I only came home from the hotel this morning. A write-up is something I have to do though! It's going to be long and fairly detailed.

I'm Triss, and officially I was the Volunteer and Staff Coordinator. Probably the closest thing to Operations Director that wasn't Chairman or Vice-Chairman in reality. Atso was our Chair, Stephen what I would call vice-chair despite what he wants to say. This write-up will be unbiased as much as possible, and from an operational standpoint with insight in to all aspects of the convention and what did or did not go on.

1. The convention was a major success to us. Our numbers were 270 officially. I have no doubt that there is a little error and they were a bit higher. We had more vinyls than that and ran out Saturday evening soooo. 270 officially all the same. This was on par with some second year conventions. Rainfurrest's first year was about 330, and that was about 7 years ago with no regional conventions in the PacNW as a long standing thing really.

I always expected between 200 to 300, though decided we would be happy if we even broke 200 as it got closer. Financially the convention was more of a success than we expected and will lend to much better assets for next year's start. We made some decent profit for reinvestment. Half of the Rainfurrest board was down at one point or another, and all of them thought we did good for ourselves with hiccups that were expected.

2. We know there were problems. Very few problems can be so unnoticeable that we wouldn't be more aware than most of the attendees. Almost all of the problems can be attributed to the following things:

First year convention (find one that didn't have some snafus), bad hotel, inexperienced convention staff doing this for their first time, 4 months of planning. I will expand on some of these.

3. That 4 months of planning part. There was such little time to plan that even people that run other conventions really doubted we would be able to pull this off at all. Yes everything was rushed. The website was horrible, our publicity and promotion via social media sucked. We didn't have the infrastructure and staff structure we needed to make things easier on us. Everything happened extremely last second. I absolutely HATE how little communication we had with the community. This is NOT all the time we figured we needed, this was all the time we were given by our chair and vice-chair to make it work. Originally we jumped on to try and minimize the damage and to make sure our friend didn't bankrupt himself. It just turned in to more of a labor of passion to actually make it more than "break even" and to become a success as time went on. If you want to criticize about our lack of planning then trust me you are preaching to the choir.

4. This was our first year, year 0. Most of us have no experience running conventions, and none of us had experience running furry conventions. I probably had more furry convention attending experience than any 3 staff members put together. Even the long time "pros" of the furry convention world will tell you that most of our mistakes were the common ones made by all first year cons.

5. Not only was it first year, but we started with no money. We didn't beg the OSFCI for a financial handout, we didn't sell ourselves to some non furry entity to compromise the experience, we didn't take out loans...etc. We are all a bunch of poor-ass Portland area furs. We didn't even really have much in the way of equipment or gear to give. We had ZERO starting capital for expenses. We had to work to fund raise, or spend our own money, etc. The game room ran entirely on stuff our staff donated for use for instance.

6. The hotel was just problematic from the start, but once it really became obvious just how terrible they were, we were backed in to a corner. We had two choices; Make the best of things, or cancel the convention. If you are familiar with the history of the Portland community then I don't need to tell you how canceling the convention would have played out in dooming attempts for the future. It also raises legal questions after a point. There is -nothing- we could do about facility and hotel problems, and we suffered right along with you. My opinion, not Furlandia's, is that the hotel was complete shit. AC sucked in rooms and event spaces, the elevators sucked, the ice machines sucked, the amenities sucked, the staff screwed all sorts of things up, rooms weren't ready on time, hotel staff was not on the right page with us. Most of the discrepancies between schedule and event start times (like GoH breakfast) were due to hotel or catering staff error.

Along with the hotel, some people complain about the date. Did you notice almost every state has a furcon now? We don't have much of a window of time to keep from competing. Even at the time we chose we came 1 week after BLFC, the same weekend as ESG, and a couple or few weeks before Califur. It's hard to get a good date. We will work on it.

7. There were tons of mistakes in programming, and some sections of our volunteer stuff could have been better. We addressed a lot of this stuff before and during closing ceremonies. We didn't have a programming lead, and we didn't have the staff structure we needed to be efficient. A lot of the local community here is just hands off until something is already up and running. We acknowledge the limitations we faced, and we don't anticipate an issue for next year. Some things were not so easily avoidable, and they were not planned out well. You can chalk that up to a lack of experience from everyone, a lack of convention experience in general for many, and a lack of time to sort of figure out along the way what we might be missing. The person leading the momentum in the planning is used to a very different sort of event as he isn't furry.

Also sorry for any hurt feelings when it came to things like the talent show or fursuit dance. These things we put on for fun, not as serious competition. We underestimated just how serious some take it. Even offering prizes was last second as we hadn't intended to.

8. Friday night - We were supposed to have the room at 3 or 4pm with stage and room set up to our specifications. There was to be no other events that week in there. We arrive between 3 and 4 to find the hotel double-booked us and an event had the room until after 6pm. Our event was supposed to start between 6 and 7. Suddenly we didn't have 3 or 4 hours to set up lights and equipment. The stage wasn't even moved in until after 6. This caused a big delay. Add to that some training issues for registration, and most importantly a lack of computers and equipment (see #5), and good process, and that made the registration line crawl like a snail. We are so sorry for that, and we've learned from it.

9. Sibe - So what? Yeah we let him come to the convention. We let him have a panel. WHO CARES?! Most Furries act like he personally kicked their dog. This isn't 2008 anymore. We wanted him to come. He's a PDX area local, he's talked about often one way or another. So what if he's controversial, we didn't force anyone to interact with him. You define your con experience just as much as anything else can, and him being present didn't change anything for a single person. This is a point of irritation to me honestly. I've heard all the stories going back years. I've always been aware of him. I've met him prior, we had dinner in a group of people and had a great time, despite me having heard it all about him before.

We are a new and unbiased convention and his money is as welcome for attending as anyone else. We let him have a Q&A panel for a reason, so the curious or the critical could attend and find out what was real or not. What you hear isn't always the truth, and in fact most of the stuff about him is made up or overblown. When he came to the panel, you don't think he didn't expect questions about it? He openly, unabashedly answered and said some brave, honest, and blunt things and tried to clear up those rumors stewing since 2007.

To be honest? Everyone there had a great time at his panel and it was probably the most attended panel, even clearing out the Saturday night dance briefly, and ended with thunderous applause and proud handshakes. Furries just love to drama.

10. Viacom - This is the big one everyone is having a knee-jerk reaction to. The TV crew. I absolutely understand the concern, but I find the mob mentality to be silly. It's a game of telephone in the end, with one furry mentioning something offhand which concerns someone else who adds more urgency as they pass the info along. I'm surprised we didn't have 10 foot tall monsters with camera hands rampaging and eating those who didn't agree to sign a release. lol.

Seriously though. Take some time, ask the actual people putting things on for details, keep a cool head, be logical and not reactionary. Sounds like a good suggestion doesn't it? That's not the fandom we work with. In fact most of those people are more a danger to making the fandom look bad than anyone now just by reacting. Luckily the cameras weren't allowed to roam freely, so who was allowed to be on was limited.

Let me try to explain the situation with the TV crews again (We did at opening and closing ceremonies)

First I'm going to say this, and I know it's hard to believe, but... THE TV CREW DIDN'T CARE ABOUT YOU. They weren't there to film the attendees and make a freak show out of them. Amazing, right? No, they were there following at most TWO people who were also high level organizers for the event, Saphy primarily, and myself secondarily. They are interested in Saphy's life as a furry and more importantly our nonprofit PDXFurs and the events we host and how the fandom meshes with our normal "non unemployed-sitting-around-playing-videogames-all-day" lives.

It is for the show True Life, which does at times feature positive stories. The convention is literally for a small segment of it, like 5 or 10 minutes, and the footage they wanted specifically features behind the scenes operations of the convention. They wanted to know what it took to put on a furry convention, and logistics. They only got a few shots of actual events just to show the payoff of our work and get some events in. It was mostly just interviews between Saphy and other people, Saphy and myself, or myself and other people. The rest of the show will take place outside of anything to do with the convention.

HOW IT WORKS! We limited them extensively in what they could do, to the point that tensions between them and us flared several times in frustration. Point being we kept them restricted. Negotiations privately took place for two months between PDXFurs and Viacom reps to make sure they understood our position, our needs, the fandom, the fandom's perception of the media...etc. Then we debated for a couple or few weeks among con staff, though only reached agreement a few days beforehand. They fully understand the fears and other things. We laid out in contract several stipulations. They were always attended by a staff member, there was no free roaming random shots. Signs were always posted in event rooms when possible, or someone went ahead and informed everyone that filming was about to take place so they could leave if they wished. Random hallway shots were usually following Saphy around and took care to try and keep them close to avoid others.

If you had face time you had to sign a release. If you didn't sign a release guess what? They can't use you. They have been sued and have lost before for it, so they aren't foolish. Most of our attendees ended up actually being cool with it, signing if something happened they could take part in. Most furs that appear were recruited willingly to take part. This is a reality show, they only get what we give them. Saph and I are not "typical furs", nor are we naive or unskilled or inexperienced with business. We did not give them anything they could use against us. We even consulted with a lawyer at certain points before the con. Yes there is a small chance you could be in a background or crowd shot but again we made sure to notify people beforehand as much as possible. If someone didn't wish to appear they generally let us know, and in some cases were allowed to sign something or make a recorded statement for the editors to the effect of not giving their permission.

Again, we truly understand the concern. The Viacom crew bent over backwards for us to do this and were amazingly courteous and professional. The producer had an amazing time and really loved the furries and the fursuits. Her facebook profile pic is even her posing with suiters (she asked my permission before even setting it to that), and she took personal pics during opening ceremonies.

We are extremely confident that the fandom will get a positive light on it. Yes Viacom is known for some trashy stuff, but every cable network has it's share. Many news outlets have made positive features. Furry is becoming mainstream and part of pop culture. You can buy a hat with ears at 7-11 at this point. The negative furry show has been done, it's old news, there is no point to it when they've already covered that.

Anybody who claims Furlandia got paid or sold out is being silly. We couldn't be paid for doing reality. Saphy and I have agreed on the basis that we wish to portray a positive image of furry. Furlandia was aware, with no real time (after the decision was made) to inform the attendees beforehand and was rewarded by a $1000 donation made to our chosen charity for the year, Portland Animal Welfare Team, who was thrilled to get it. Besides the Gelato Social do you know what furries donated? $6 over the course of the weekend. And to the people who did donate a big THANK YOU, but as you can see, not many did. That would have been disappointing for the charity.

In the end, I think this will go fine, and a lot of thought went in to it. As a long time, well known fur said this weekend. Furry is going mainstream, and if we don't control our message through the media, then someone else will decide what that message is for us, but it will be made either way. What if it does go fine, will the reactionists eat their words? Of course not.

There is a strong chance they won't even use footage of the convention at all, or that the concept of the episode will be scrapped entirely and nothing about furries is done.