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Letter from the Convention Chair: Registration & Room Rates
11 years ago
General
June 16, 2014,
My Dear Friends,
As the Maltese Fur-Con approaches, I’d like to take a moment to address a few things that have come to our attention. In the last couple of months, we’ve received a lot of praise, and quite a bit of criticism (though most of it has been constructive), about how we are planning and running our upcoming event. The main purpose of this letter is to address some of the main concerns people have had regarding the convention, but before I do, I’d like to share a little bit of history with you all, if you’ll allow my indulgence.
The Maltese Fur-Con has taken a long and winding road to get to its current incarnation. Back in 2011, during some of my Livestreams, the idea of putting on a convention in Boston where “everybody is cool and hangs out (to quote Eddie Izzard)” was tossed around, but nothing ever really came of it. It was always along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be awesome if…?” – a phrase I’ve heard turned many times by all sorts of folks. We began to joke about what this “mythical convention” would entail, and soon, “RourkieCon” became kind of a legend in itself; an idealized concept where everyone got to hang out with all of their friends. Through the next couple of years, people asked why we hadn’t started our own convention yet, and the answer was always preceded by “We’d like to, but…”
One by one, the excuses started wearing thin, and as people became more serious about asking when we were going to throw our convention, it became clear that there really was no reason not to just go for it. Boston had its fair share of cons, but none of them were wholly furry, despite the growing number of furs at conventions like Anime Boston, and Arisia, a science fiction/fantasy convention. So we asked ourselves, “Why not?” With no good reasons left not to, we started planning.
Most conventions start out as small gatherings, and work their way up to convention-status, so the first thing we asked ourselves was, did we want to do the same? We unanimously decided no: go big, or go home. Several of us have had previous convention experience (which I’ll get into in a moment), and felt confident that the best way to start was to dive in head-long.
We had an open-forum theme planning session which was open to the public. This is where the criticism started coming in, which, was interesting, to say the very least. Although some considered our approach to be unconventional, (pun not intended, but perhaps “unorthodox” would have been a better word choice,) we wanted our convention to be completely attendee-centric, so we wanted to hear as many opinions as we possibly could. We’d decided the main focus of our convention had shifted from “be cool and hang out” to “let’s make this as fun as possible for everyone who participates.” After the topic of mystery was chosen, we decided to tackle on a larger challenge: provide a high-quality furcon, AND provide a weekend full of mystery and intrigue as an added bonus to anyone who liked a good puzzle to solve.
From there, we hand-picked our staff based on experience and personality. The former was important, for obvious reasons, and among us, we have over 60 years of convention staff experience. The latter was important, though, too. If we were going to be successful, we needed a staff that worked well together. Keep in mind that all of us work full-time jobs as well, and that finding time to run a convention in an already busy week is very difficult sometimes.
This brings me to the first major concern that many of our critics have brought up: there is some concern that because we’ve released features of our website in parts, it’s a sign that we’re disorganized, especially since there seem to be an overall lack of updates. The explanation for this is simple: we’ve been building this convention from the ground up. It’s a type of convention no one has seen in the furry world, because it involves a live story aspect. We’ve been working tirelessly on providing this experience for our attendees, but if something isn’t ready to go live, we don’t want to put out a sub-standard product. This convention is just as much about the “look and feel” as it is about thxt e experience itself, just as so much about Noir (this year’s theme) is all about the “look and feel.”
We’re proud of the elements we’ve released, and are happy to keep introducing elements as they’re developed. Once the convention is established in its second year, we’ll have the infrastructure already in place, so we’ll be able to really focus on story and updates. Right now, though, we’ve been focusing on developing tools to make your convention experience more satisfying, so our updates have been less frequent, but include several large additions when they come about.
The second concern was regarding our pre-registration deadline cutting off too early. Our deadline was originally set based on how quickly we thought our printer could produce the conbooks, and what the cut-off date for the metal customized badges we’re providing would be. With updated quotes from both vendors, we’re able to be a little more flexible in our pre-registration cut-off, allowing more attendees to take advantage of our pre-con pricing. We’ve extended registration indefinitely for now, but very shortly, we will be releasing another update that outlines the new end date, which we feel will be more lenient to last-minute purchasers.
Lastly, we understand that many of our attendees feel that our hotel rates are too high. We feel that $180 in Boston during peak season is a fantastic deal, especially when you split that among 3 or 4 people.
However, due to the frequency of feedback we’ve received regarding this issue, we are looking into solutions to lower this cost even further. We’ll make an announcement about this as soon as we get confirmation from the hotel, but in the meantime, we urge you to consider staying at the Logan Hilton. There are many elements to our storyline and the convention that are integrated into all-hours of the evening, and “day-trippers” won’t be able to enjoy the same experience as those who stay right at the hotel.
What it comes down to is that we’re working hard to provide you with the best convention experience possible. We hope that this has cleared up some of the criticism we’ve received, and given you a little more information about what to expect in August. As always, you can contact me directly at rourkie@maltesefurcon.com. I’ll answer any question you might have, no matter how large or how small.
Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you in August. Go gett’em gumshoes!
Daniel “Rourkie” O’Rourke
Convention Chair
Maltese Fur-Con
My Dear Friends,
As the Maltese Fur-Con approaches, I’d like to take a moment to address a few things that have come to our attention. In the last couple of months, we’ve received a lot of praise, and quite a bit of criticism (though most of it has been constructive), about how we are planning and running our upcoming event. The main purpose of this letter is to address some of the main concerns people have had regarding the convention, but before I do, I’d like to share a little bit of history with you all, if you’ll allow my indulgence.
The Maltese Fur-Con has taken a long and winding road to get to its current incarnation. Back in 2011, during some of my Livestreams, the idea of putting on a convention in Boston where “everybody is cool and hangs out (to quote Eddie Izzard)” was tossed around, but nothing ever really came of it. It was always along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be awesome if…?” – a phrase I’ve heard turned many times by all sorts of folks. We began to joke about what this “mythical convention” would entail, and soon, “RourkieCon” became kind of a legend in itself; an idealized concept where everyone got to hang out with all of their friends. Through the next couple of years, people asked why we hadn’t started our own convention yet, and the answer was always preceded by “We’d like to, but…”
One by one, the excuses started wearing thin, and as people became more serious about asking when we were going to throw our convention, it became clear that there really was no reason not to just go for it. Boston had its fair share of cons, but none of them were wholly furry, despite the growing number of furs at conventions like Anime Boston, and Arisia, a science fiction/fantasy convention. So we asked ourselves, “Why not?” With no good reasons left not to, we started planning.
Most conventions start out as small gatherings, and work their way up to convention-status, so the first thing we asked ourselves was, did we want to do the same? We unanimously decided no: go big, or go home. Several of us have had previous convention experience (which I’ll get into in a moment), and felt confident that the best way to start was to dive in head-long.
We had an open-forum theme planning session which was open to the public. This is where the criticism started coming in, which, was interesting, to say the very least. Although some considered our approach to be unconventional, (pun not intended, but perhaps “unorthodox” would have been a better word choice,) we wanted our convention to be completely attendee-centric, so we wanted to hear as many opinions as we possibly could. We’d decided the main focus of our convention had shifted from “be cool and hang out” to “let’s make this as fun as possible for everyone who participates.” After the topic of mystery was chosen, we decided to tackle on a larger challenge: provide a high-quality furcon, AND provide a weekend full of mystery and intrigue as an added bonus to anyone who liked a good puzzle to solve.
From there, we hand-picked our staff based on experience and personality. The former was important, for obvious reasons, and among us, we have over 60 years of convention staff experience. The latter was important, though, too. If we were going to be successful, we needed a staff that worked well together. Keep in mind that all of us work full-time jobs as well, and that finding time to run a convention in an already busy week is very difficult sometimes.
This brings me to the first major concern that many of our critics have brought up: there is some concern that because we’ve released features of our website in parts, it’s a sign that we’re disorganized, especially since there seem to be an overall lack of updates. The explanation for this is simple: we’ve been building this convention from the ground up. It’s a type of convention no one has seen in the furry world, because it involves a live story aspect. We’ve been working tirelessly on providing this experience for our attendees, but if something isn’t ready to go live, we don’t want to put out a sub-standard product. This convention is just as much about the “look and feel” as it is about thxt e experience itself, just as so much about Noir (this year’s theme) is all about the “look and feel.”
We’re proud of the elements we’ve released, and are happy to keep introducing elements as they’re developed. Once the convention is established in its second year, we’ll have the infrastructure already in place, so we’ll be able to really focus on story and updates. Right now, though, we’ve been focusing on developing tools to make your convention experience more satisfying, so our updates have been less frequent, but include several large additions when they come about.
The second concern was regarding our pre-registration deadline cutting off too early. Our deadline was originally set based on how quickly we thought our printer could produce the conbooks, and what the cut-off date for the metal customized badges we’re providing would be. With updated quotes from both vendors, we’re able to be a little more flexible in our pre-registration cut-off, allowing more attendees to take advantage of our pre-con pricing. We’ve extended registration indefinitely for now, but very shortly, we will be releasing another update that outlines the new end date, which we feel will be more lenient to last-minute purchasers.
Lastly, we understand that many of our attendees feel that our hotel rates are too high. We feel that $180 in Boston during peak season is a fantastic deal, especially when you split that among 3 or 4 people.
However, due to the frequency of feedback we’ve received regarding this issue, we are looking into solutions to lower this cost even further. We’ll make an announcement about this as soon as we get confirmation from the hotel, but in the meantime, we urge you to consider staying at the Logan Hilton. There are many elements to our storyline and the convention that are integrated into all-hours of the evening, and “day-trippers” won’t be able to enjoy the same experience as those who stay right at the hotel.
What it comes down to is that we’re working hard to provide you with the best convention experience possible. We hope that this has cleared up some of the criticism we’ve received, and given you a little more information about what to expect in August. As always, you can contact me directly at rourkie@maltesefurcon.com. I’ll answer any question you might have, no matter how large or how small.
Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you in August. Go gett’em gumshoes!
Daniel “Rourkie” O’Rourke
Convention Chair
Maltese Fur-Con
pj wolf
~pyrostinger
Sounds ambitious. I just wish I could go, but alas.
