Anthrocon 2010 is coming, June 24-27th! Anthrocon's selected charity this year is Fayette Friends Of Animals (http://www.fayettefriendsofanimals.net/).

If you are interested in joining the Anthrocon Charity announcements list, please opt-in at . It features three bi-monthly progress updates and an auction summary after the convention.

If you would like to donate art or merchandise to the Anthrocon Charity Auction/Raffle, please follow the steps below:

1. Visit Anthrocon 2010's homepage for convention details (http://www.anthrocon.org).
2. Review the latest Anthrocon 2010 Charity Auction FAQ and rules on the Anthrocon webpage under Guests & Events>Charity Auction [FAQ]>Auction Rules section.
3. Contact to confirm your participation.

Anthrocon has selected the Fayette Friends Of Animals to be our beneficiary for 2010. They are a no-kill dog & cat rescue shelter in Uniontown, PA with shelter facilities and adoption programs. They will be at the Charity Auction and will also have a table in the Dealers' Room where you can meet them and some of their animal friends.

We had been worried that the rush would fill the Westin to capacity in minutes. As it turned out, they continued to take reservations into the following morning. The last rooms were sold (and the hotel even stretched our room block a bit) about 24 hours after the reservations opened.

Scientists love to make graphs. Here's a graph of % of room block allocation for each day of the convention vs. the number of hours after February 2, 0900 h.

What we learned:

1) Our estimate of the demand for rooms for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights was spot on.

2) Obviously there is a higher demand for rooms on the Tuesday before the convention. We'll try to get more rooms in 2011 on that date, but it is very dependent on what sort of group is in the hotel ahead of us and when they move out.

Here is where we stand with hotel rooms as of today, Feb.3:

WESTIN: A very few number of king rooms are available. Also, with some shuffling of the inventory, additional suites have been made available to us. You can learn more about reserving suites by clicking here. Double rooms are completely sold out and the kings are likely going to sell out very soon.

COURTYARD: A very few number of king rooms are available. Doubles are completely sold out, and the kings are expected to sell out very soon.

OMNI: Plenty of rooms of all types are still available.

DOUBLETREE: Plenty of rooms of all types are still available.

UPDATE: All double rooms in the Westin are sold very nearly sold!(some got freed up after initial shuffling). Do NOT select a specific room type when you book -- the system will tell you what sort of rooms are available.
UPDATE: Tuesday, June 22 is sold out for the Westin. We can get no more rooms there that evening.

This is it! The moment you've been waiting for (and we've been dreading). All four hotel pages are open with links that will let you make reservations online and phone numbers if you want to do it like we did in the Modern Stone Age. This is something we have never tried before and we're as nervous as you are. We all are confident that both anthrocon.org and the individual hotel sites can handle the rush, but nonetheless, be prepared for a possible slowdown. We apologize in advance if it causes any inconvenience; unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to remedy it. Things will begin at our main hotel information page.

Hi folks,

I made a few new tweaks to the website today.

First, we have now have a currency converter for our international members. It can be found under the "Travel Information" section at http://www.anthrocon.org/currency.

Second, we hate spam. We really hate spam. In an effort to more quickly deal with the occasional spammer who shows up, we added the ability to flag any post or comment as "spam" or "inappropriate". An email will be sent to our website team who will then investigate. Note that you must be logged in to flag posts.

We also introduced the ability to send private messages between users. Go to http://www.anthrocon.org/messages to view your private messages or send a new private message.

Finally, we added a bookmarking feature. If you are logged in, the bottom of each post will have a link titled "Bookmark this". Clicking that will add the post to your list of bookmarks. To view your bookmarks, head over to http://www.anthrocon.org/bookmarks.

Any questions? Let me know!

From Simbalion:

Hey there furries! It's been a heck of a year, we've recieved a lot of auditions like each year, and it's always difficult to determine who gets time slots on the stage at Anthrocon. But the time has come and the selections have been made. Without further ado:

Main Ballroom DJs:
Rory, Alphawolf, Rukkus, Tekfox, Croc, Protocollie, Pawz, Dragonboy, Big Blue Fox, Banshee, Ironheart

Fursuit DJs:
Antimon, Rory, Yappyfox

Many of you who have responded in the thread asking if you are attending AC2010 should start receiving a message about a special project. There are lots of you, so it's taking a while to get that information to everyone available. If you receive a message from me...yes it's legit, and yes, I am looking for some folks to help with the special project. If you indicated that you will be in attendance, check your messages on this site for information within the next few days. All requests for help should be going out within the next week or so.

Thanks all! It's going to be a great year!

KP
Anthrocon Programming Director

I have confirmed the very sad news that Anthrocon staff member Wade "Darkwolfie" Dooley passed away peacefully this morning after a long hospitalization following a diagnosis of H1N1 influenza. I spoke with his wife, who asked me to pass along a very brief message: "Just let the Fandom know that he loved them."