The Courtyard and Westin are completely full!

The Omni ihas added some rooms with single queen beds -- all the double-bed rooms are sold.

The Doubletree has just two rooms left, and they are both rooms with single king-beds.

The Hampton is sold out and we're seeing about stretching the block.

If you've been procrastinating, we don't recommend waiting any longer!  If all hotels are booked full, we will see what we can negotiate with some of the other hotels that are nearby, but a little bit out of easy walking distance. 

The deadline for submissions is less than a month away!

Anthrocon is currently seeking submissions of artwork, fiction, photography, and articles for publication in its 2012 conbook. The Anthrocon conbook offers a fantastic forum for artists and writers to showcase their talents to their peers. To make contributing to the conbook easier, a file-uploading site is available. Anthrocon asks for non-exclusive print rights for submitted works. The artist or author may publish the submitted work in any other fashion; previously, at the same time, and after.

While we welcome any submissions of most any nature, please be aware that priority may be given to those works that complements the theme of the convention, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' All submissions should be in the 'G' to 'PG-13' rating.

For complete guidelines and release form, check out the Anthrocon Conbook Submission Guidelines page at http://www.anthrocon.org/conbook

Anthrocon 2012 is upon us!  This year, Sharky and I will be working to coordinate the Fursuit Track!

I am looking for panelists to donate some time and skill to go over areas of fursuiting experience they are familiar with!  

Below are generic items covered by this track, but ANY idea would be helpful!  Please feel free to forward this email to anyone who may be attending the convention who would be interested!

As you may have heard, Anthrocon's selected charity this year is Hello Bully, a local Pittsburgh 501(c)3 pit bull shelter and rescue.  While cash donations made at the convention are great, the majority of funds are raised via donations of artwork and merchandise to our Charity Auction and Charity Raffle.  We're looking for popular items and unique craftwork that will make people say, "I want that!"

While we must distribute items between the Raffle and Auction based on available space, time, and perceived and past value, here are some examples of donations that went big in past years...

Great examples for the raffle: Crafts based on hot trends (Harry Potter handmade house scarves - $57); Large amounts of candy (5lb Hershey bar, 9.25lb Nestle Crunch bar - $70); Art bought at prior convention art shows ("Wrath" art by Terrie Smith - $83); Giant, brand new plush of popular characters (Large "Bolt" plush - $107); Merchandise based on popular fiction (Dr. Who's sonic screwdriver - $158)

Great examples for the auction: Fursuit costumes and commissions (Horstachio costume & candy - $150); Rare convention memorabilia (Full set of all AC t-shirts since 1997 - $200); Professional sculpture (Dragon statue - $225); Unique opportunities (A speaking part in audio version of Diane Duane's "The Last Meow" - $500); Dorsai fursuit tags (Tag #1000 - $1600)

If you have an item you believe would be appropriate and would like to donate, please contact charity-2012(at)anthrocon.org!

Helpful links:

Charity Auction/Raffle FAQ - http://www.anthrocon.org/charity

Hello all.

Now that the hotel and registration rushes have calmed and folks are relatively certain of their attendance this year, we're putting out the official call for equipment and video games to help make the VG room a success this year. Last year, we had quite a few furs ask us "Why don't you have [insert game here]?" or "Why aren't there enough [insert console here] controllers?" The answer is very simple: we rely almost entirely on the generousity of AC's attendees to populate the VG room with the latest and greatest in games, consoles, controllers and tournaents. If the VG room staff doesn't personally own a particular game/console/controller, then the only way it gets to the con is.. YOU! Yes, you! So dust off the copy of Mortal Kombat you beat two weeks after you bought it, or the lonely Game Cube controllers pineing for one more game of Smash and bring them along for the ride!

Items we're chronically short of:
Wii consoles with fully unlocked Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Game Cube controllers (wired or not, we don't mind)
Recent 1v1 fighter games 
Furs who want to host a tournament 

We make every attempt to keep your games and gear safe! Anything you choose to donate to the VG room for the duration of the con will be marked with a unique id (a little colored sticker) and logged on an inventory sheet that you will receive a copy of. Games are only handled by VG room staff, and furs must checkout controllers using their AC badge.

Hi everyone!

If you're curious about some of the top 10 reasons to visit the city of Pittsburgh, Anthrocon has now made it into that top 10 list!  If you'd like to read the article, you can find it here in USA Today's web site:   http://content.usatoday.com/.../pop-traveler-10-reasons-to-visit-pittsburgh/1#.T0Ot4ExAbNB

(We have it right from our convention chairman's comment, that this news actually made him do a spit take.)

If there was any question that the city of Pittsburgh has really taken a shine to Anthrocon and its attendees, this article should answer that question once and for all.

You may not wish to wait much longer.  Click here for an update of our hotel fill-rate.

Note that when we say "full" we are referring to Anthrocon's contracted room block.  When the room block fills there may still be rooms available in the hotel; whether or not we can negotiate to have them added to our block (which offers a substantial discount off of the standard rate) is out of our hands, and will depend on many factors.  We will do our utmost to ensure that there are affordable rooms within a reasonable distance of the Convention Center, but please understand that while we are very good at negotiating, we've not been able to get Pittsburgh to build us another hotel attached to the Convention Center.  We think that we've got them considering it, at least.

Another note:  If you try to make a reservation and receive an error message or a message that says "rate not available on chosen nights," it is possible (and in fact probable) that the block is only sold out on one of the nights you've chosen, or that the room type that you selected is not available (for example, as of this posting the Doubletree has only two double rooms left in our block).  If that happens, please send an email to ceo(at)anthrocon.org and let us know which hotel you tried to book at.  We cannot promise, but we may be able to add a few more rooms to the block.  If not, we will update the hotel status on our hotel page.

Remember, if you see someone crying that our hotels are full, check here first.  The hotels are not full until we say they are!

As folks noticed on Thursday morning when we opened hotels, the website displayed errors for 5-10 minutes starting at 9 AM EST due to the rush of traffic that came in.  This was due to a few factors, which I'd like to go into in technical detail below.

First, some raw stats:

Peak bandwidth: approx 3.6 Megabits/sec

Peak connections: 1,060 concurrent connections

Number of users logged into the site: 100+

Here are some graphs that show just how big those numbers are, compared to normal traffic levels:

For those who saw last year's post about the load on the webserver when we opened up hotels, this year's traffic was about twice what last year's traffic was.  I didn't see that coming.

As is plainly visible in the traffic graph, the machine that this website runs on is capabale of much higher bandwidth throughput.  So, what happened?

In a word: caching.  Or rather, the lack thereof in certain cases.

First off a big thank you to the city of Pittsburgh for once again having us there and for the extra hotel space.  Good luck with the NHL draft!

Well once again we are closing in on another Anthrocon. We of the logistical department are already gearing up for another great con and its sure to not disappoint. The first thing that I would like to share is our more organized storage locker at Etna. Everything is labled and packed in such a way that it should make unloading the truck at the con a lot easier. This does bring up some new hurdles however at the close of the con as we would like everything to be placed back exactly as we unloaded it. This will take a team effort not only from the whole logistics dept but also from the other staff as well. We know your up to it though.

Secondly, the logistics staff will be sporting some new attire to help in identifing us should any one need to find us and can tell us apart on site. Security seemed to like the shirts we had last year and I was told it did alliviate some confusion so thats a plus. For those wondering what we have this year...you will find out.

For those of you who want to volunteer in the department we need most of your help during setup and takedown. Not only are these our most active times all your volunteer time is doubled at these peek times as well! Either see Con Ops or one of the logistical staff and we will be happy to install shock coll...er set you up with volunteer forms.

Thats it for me here. Lets make Anthrocon 2012 the best ever...we may not be around much more anyway if that darn Mayan calender has its way...

Our friends at the Doubletree have made more suites available. They are quite a bargain at $169, and they can once more be reserved online by clicking here and checking the box that says "Suites."

If you already made your reservation at the Doubletree and would like to upgrade your room to a suite, you can do that by calling the hotel directly and asking to speak to Ms. Judy Costello. We have quite a few suites ready to go but not an infinite supply, so don't delay!