Westin Hotel nearly full -- Wednesday sold out.

"I should have registered sooner." I'm sure a lot of people trying to register for Feral tell themselves that every year. Someday if I ever get the resources to do three cons I'd love to try that too...

I say something similar to my friends when I hear from them, "oh noes the hotel is booked solid! What should I do?"

*edit* Just wanted to add that I'm relieved to hear it is something that has been discussed. If the powers that be have decided it isn't a problem, then so be it. It may be vain of me to take such a position on the matter in the first place, but it is a relief to hear that the staff takes such concerns seriously even if they don't think it has any merit.

-If someone walks up to you and says they are a pathological liar, would you believe them?

I meant to ask something about the hotel earlier...someone in another thread saying something that the *normal* rate of a hotel room from the Westin is like $300 a night? Do you guys really get the price down THAT much for the con? o.O Or did I just read that wrong?

Anyway, I didn't doubt the ability of the DLCC to accommodate us, just that the convention would eventually get mind-boggling to attend for the convention-goer in terms of getting around and being able to find people/places/events.

As for the staff side, I'm impressed to hear that cons of a 12k magnitude manage with an all-volunteer staff. How much time does the staff get to enjoy the con? Does the chairman of that con get to enjoy the con too?

I have a tremendous amount of respect for the staff and volunteers of this and every other furry con, but I wouldn't want them to get run ragged *without* being able to enjoy the fruits of their own labor Especially if it's just for the principle of "we can do this because someone else did it bigger". The con is there for all of us (except badge #3001 ).

When I request time off at work, I tell my boss it's for a family reunion. For me, that's precisely what it is. The faces and names I see at AC are like distant relatives I haven't seen in years. The good, the bad...and the *creepy Uncle nobody likes to talk about* Trust in people aside (like a recent 2 rant, I'm not that ignorant of people), they are my extended family. And it simply wouldn't do to have members of my family working HARDER on vacation than they do in their normal lives just so that they can get drunk Sunday night and proclaim "We did it again" then pass out hoping to forget all the stress they put themselves through.

Promise me you guys won't work too hard?

-If someone walks up to you and says they are a pathological liar, would you believe them?

Pittsburgh's geography is strange and those hotels within "walking distance" might not actually be.

I want to second and verify Tom's remarks.

Anthrocon isn't small by convention standards, but it's nowhere near as big as the convention and hotels facilities will allow. So long as you don't have the requirement that the entire convention attendance and function rooms are in the same building, it's relatively easy find facilities that will let you get up to 10,000. Once you get beyond that, you start having to look at major convention cities, eg, Atlanta (Dragoncon), Las Vegas, and so forth.

In many ways the staffing is comparatively easy to scale up. The hardest part is to get qualified department heads for art show, conops, registration, etc. But once you do, their expertise and skills are multiplied by their core helpers and multiplied again by the semi-skilled volunteer staffs.

To cite the example I know best, security: last year the Dorsai brought in a bit over 40 staffers. Of those 40, 30 are qualified to be supervisors of one type of another. If Anthrocon were to grow to 5,000 or so, we'd stop putting those supervisors on door duty and start relying more on on-site or recruited volunteers. Relatively simple things like badge check can be pushed down to those volunteers, freeing the supervisors to become rovers (floor walkers and visible deterrent). With more rovers, door watchers can immediately refer problems up the chain and thus don't require the same skill level as we need now.

Anthrocon has some additional scaling benefits. It tends to run a relatively small number of functions in large rooms. Having 5,000 people in the ballroom means only one or two more badge checkers than we need for 1,500.

More scaling advantages come when you can book 100% of a facility. In the near future, Anthroncon might be able to book 100% of the hotel. When that happens, you no longer need to do door check at function rooms. You move it to the hallways, escalators and elevators folks use to get to the rooms, with the rovers doing spot-checks for ghosts. The half-dozen or so entry points to the hotel function space require far fewer checkers than the 30+ doors into function rooms.

Similar things apply to art show, registration, dealers, etc: doubling and tripling the attendance requires significantly smaller increases in staff.

As someone familiar with Downtown Pittsburgh I would say that at least one of those hotels is not in a good location. There has been an increase, in recent years, in the number of hotels close to the convention center but there still aren't enough hotels to accommodate the maximum number of people who could potentially attend a convention at DLCC. (At least this is the main complaint I hear.) That being said, I attended a WorldCon in Philadelphia and we had to walk several blocks to get to our hotel from the convention center. I didn't see this as a problem. Anyone who wants to come to Anthrocon will be still be able to find a hotel room. It might not be as convenient as staying in the Westin but still there are hotels that are not too far away. On the whole I agree that there is no need to cap attendance.

*pictures a 13-ton bell on his arm* o.o