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My comments on Great Lakes Fur Con (Warning: not all great)
9 years ago
I heavily debated whether or not I should even make this journal. In the end I decided it would be better to vent my feelings than just let them stir within me.
Great Lakes Fur Con 2016 was my 22nd time attending a furry convention. I love going to fur cons, that should be obvious. If I didn't, I wouldn't have gone to them close to two dozen times. Looking back at all my fur con experiences and comparing this past weekend to all my previous cons, GLFC 2016 was probably my worst.
With that said, I want to start off by saying that of course it wasn't all bad. The best part of every con is spending time with friends. Kira, Lee, Chronsky, Barkley, and my roommates Arcky, Axl, and Jayde, I enjoyed the time I got to spend with each and every one of you. It is always great seeing you all. The absolute best moment of my weekend was seeing the reaction I got from the two artists from whom I picked up badges when I gave them both tips for their amazing work. The few panels I attended were enjoyable. And I enjoyed running my own panel, Furry Pictionary. More on that below.
Sadly, I can't say much more good about my weekend. For every good point that I could list about what went well, I could match it with a point about something that didn't go well. And if you only enjoy half of the aspects of a con, that's dangerously close to the "overall not worth going" range.
My biggest gripe was with the schedule. And oh god did this con ever have a terrible schedule. Where do I even begin?
The Sponsor's Lounge was open from 12 to 2 and from 5 to 7 on Friday, from 11 to 1 and from 4 to 6 on Saturday, and from 11 to 2 on Sunday. I meant to ask while at the con but I never did, so I'll ask here - why was the Sponsor's Lounge open for such a short amount of time? I go to MFF every year, and every year their Con Suite is open all day. I went to every year of FCN, and every year the Sponsor's Lounge was open all day, and MCFC has carried on that tradition. With most cons giving Sponsors - and in MFF's case all attendees - all day access to a Con Suite/Sponsor's Lounge, why have GLFC's open for only two or three hour blocks of time?
That wasn't the only problem with the schedule, far from it in fact. The main thing, though, is that there were so few events. There were four events on Sunday, six counting Closing Ceremonies and the Dead Dog Dance. I wasn't even planning on going to the Dance Showcase, but I did because I heard that my friend Kira was going to be in it and I'd never seen her dance before.
The lack of panels isn't really all that shocking to be honest. The number of panels on the schedule can only be as big as the number of panels suggested, and with an attendance of just over 300 people, you're not going to get a whole lot of requests. And before I make my next point, let me point out that I was a department leader at a fur con for four years. I know first hand how difficult it is running a convention, and that goes for everyone involved, and that includes the programming department.
This is the biggest point I want to make, and I mean no disrespect to the programming director when I write this next part. Running my panel, Furry Pictionary, was my most anticipated part of my GLFC weekend. And the panel itself went very well. It wasn't perfect, but it went well. But I was completely baffled when I found out it was scheduled for 10am on Saturday. Not only that, but it was scheduled for the same exact time as the Fursuit Games. Minor point - why put the Fursuit Games there? I've never seen the Fursuit Games scheduled in the morning. But the more important point is something that I only realized while I was writing this journal - the overlap of the Fursuit Games and Furry Pictionary was the only instance of two events with an overlap for their entire duration. Every other example of two events taking place at the same time had only a half hour overlap. My hour and a half panel started at the same time as the two hour Fursuit Games.
Yes, I know that not everyone who runs a panel is going to be happy with the time slot they're given. Yes, I know that putting together a schedule for a fur con is not an easy thing to do, and overlapping panels is an inevitability. But the 10am start time of my panel and the coincidence with the Fursuit Games, which were in the neighboring room, were two strikes against me from the start. And I tried everything I could to garner interest in my panel - I made an FA journal about it, I tweeted about it, the con's Twitter account tweeted about it, I even made a sign on a foam board advertising the panel that my roommate carried around with him almost all day Friday. And after all that, at the start of my panel there were six people in the audience, and three of those six were my roommates. All those steps to try ensuring a good turnout didn't really, well, turn out. There were close to twenty people in the room at the end of the game, which was great, and a big improvement from last year, but obviously it would have been an even better game had that many people been there from the start.
There's one more point I could make to describe why my weekend was not among the better con weekends I've had in the past, but it's a personal reason that would say not so great things about a few people and about myself, so I will refrain from doing so.
Last year was my first GLFC, and I was only there for a day. Less than a day, really. What small fraction I saw last year gave me the feeling that the con was being planned as it was happening. This year I attended from Friday morning to Monday morning, and that same feeling returned and stayed with me the whole time. Registration started in one location and was later moved to another. The signage looked very unprofessional. The dances were shut down early some nights. The schedule was a mess. Attendance went down from last year's number.
GLFC, what you did well got done well. What didn't go well went very poorly. If anyone has answers to the questions I asked above, I'd love to hear them. If you had a great time at GLFC, I'd also love to hear about that. This was half a con review, half just me venting, so if you really strongly disagree with what I said, you're free to comment, but keep in mind, I had a rough weekend, if that wasn't already abundantly clear.
Great Lakes Fur Con 2016 was my 22nd time attending a furry convention. I love going to fur cons, that should be obvious. If I didn't, I wouldn't have gone to them close to two dozen times. Looking back at all my fur con experiences and comparing this past weekend to all my previous cons, GLFC 2016 was probably my worst.
With that said, I want to start off by saying that of course it wasn't all bad. The best part of every con is spending time with friends. Kira, Lee, Chronsky, Barkley, and my roommates Arcky, Axl, and Jayde, I enjoyed the time I got to spend with each and every one of you. It is always great seeing you all. The absolute best moment of my weekend was seeing the reaction I got from the two artists from whom I picked up badges when I gave them both tips for their amazing work. The few panels I attended were enjoyable. And I enjoyed running my own panel, Furry Pictionary. More on that below.
Sadly, I can't say much more good about my weekend. For every good point that I could list about what went well, I could match it with a point about something that didn't go well. And if you only enjoy half of the aspects of a con, that's dangerously close to the "overall not worth going" range.
My biggest gripe was with the schedule. And oh god did this con ever have a terrible schedule. Where do I even begin?
The Sponsor's Lounge was open from 12 to 2 and from 5 to 7 on Friday, from 11 to 1 and from 4 to 6 on Saturday, and from 11 to 2 on Sunday. I meant to ask while at the con but I never did, so I'll ask here - why was the Sponsor's Lounge open for such a short amount of time? I go to MFF every year, and every year their Con Suite is open all day. I went to every year of FCN, and every year the Sponsor's Lounge was open all day, and MCFC has carried on that tradition. With most cons giving Sponsors - and in MFF's case all attendees - all day access to a Con Suite/Sponsor's Lounge, why have GLFC's open for only two or three hour blocks of time?
That wasn't the only problem with the schedule, far from it in fact. The main thing, though, is that there were so few events. There were four events on Sunday, six counting Closing Ceremonies and the Dead Dog Dance. I wasn't even planning on going to the Dance Showcase, but I did because I heard that my friend Kira was going to be in it and I'd never seen her dance before.
The lack of panels isn't really all that shocking to be honest. The number of panels on the schedule can only be as big as the number of panels suggested, and with an attendance of just over 300 people, you're not going to get a whole lot of requests. And before I make my next point, let me point out that I was a department leader at a fur con for four years. I know first hand how difficult it is running a convention, and that goes for everyone involved, and that includes the programming department.
This is the biggest point I want to make, and I mean no disrespect to the programming director when I write this next part. Running my panel, Furry Pictionary, was my most anticipated part of my GLFC weekend. And the panel itself went very well. It wasn't perfect, but it went well. But I was completely baffled when I found out it was scheduled for 10am on Saturday. Not only that, but it was scheduled for the same exact time as the Fursuit Games. Minor point - why put the Fursuit Games there? I've never seen the Fursuit Games scheduled in the morning. But the more important point is something that I only realized while I was writing this journal - the overlap of the Fursuit Games and Furry Pictionary was the only instance of two events with an overlap for their entire duration. Every other example of two events taking place at the same time had only a half hour overlap. My hour and a half panel started at the same time as the two hour Fursuit Games.
Yes, I know that not everyone who runs a panel is going to be happy with the time slot they're given. Yes, I know that putting together a schedule for a fur con is not an easy thing to do, and overlapping panels is an inevitability. But the 10am start time of my panel and the coincidence with the Fursuit Games, which were in the neighboring room, were two strikes against me from the start. And I tried everything I could to garner interest in my panel - I made an FA journal about it, I tweeted about it, the con's Twitter account tweeted about it, I even made a sign on a foam board advertising the panel that my roommate carried around with him almost all day Friday. And after all that, at the start of my panel there were six people in the audience, and three of those six were my roommates. All those steps to try ensuring a good turnout didn't really, well, turn out. There were close to twenty people in the room at the end of the game, which was great, and a big improvement from last year, but obviously it would have been an even better game had that many people been there from the start.
There's one more point I could make to describe why my weekend was not among the better con weekends I've had in the past, but it's a personal reason that would say not so great things about a few people and about myself, so I will refrain from doing so.
Last year was my first GLFC, and I was only there for a day. Less than a day, really. What small fraction I saw last year gave me the feeling that the con was being planned as it was happening. This year I attended from Friday morning to Monday morning, and that same feeling returned and stayed with me the whole time. Registration started in one location and was later moved to another. The signage looked very unprofessional. The dances were shut down early some nights. The schedule was a mess. Attendance went down from last year's number.
GLFC, what you did well got done well. What didn't go well went very poorly. If anyone has answers to the questions I asked above, I'd love to hear them. If you had a great time at GLFC, I'd also love to hear about that. This was half a con review, half just me venting, so if you really strongly disagree with what I said, you're free to comment, but keep in mind, I had a rough weekend, if that wasn't already abundantly clear.
I had a super awesome time this year. Much better than last year. I think I may be biased since I got to hang with the GOH's the last two nights of the con. They're an absolute riot!
I'm sorry to hear your panel did not go well - it sounded like a lot of fun. But why the heck did they schedule anything fun for 10am on Saturday? Everybody knows we don't wake up until afternoon.