Dorsai view of the con

A very broad question. I'm going to give a somewhat less broad answer.

It's worth noting that most of the DI interaction on the forums happens with me and with Dave 'Skippy' Stein. That's partially intentional. Too many people making slightly different responses to a complaint only muddy the water. One or two people present a more consistent and therefore more understandable point of view. That in turn helps us have productive discussion of such complaints rather than argument. When there's some particularly interesting or relevant topic, we send the URL to the appropriate DI group and we discuss it. Then Dave or I come back and and continue the conversation with you folks. We tend to know the personalities here better than the other DI, and we're usually pretty good about letting folks here know when we're expressing our personal opinions as opposed to official security statements as opposed to official concom statements. The DI are pretty happy with what Dave and I do; we're probably going to stick to the way we're doing it.

But do we discuss Anthrocon among ourselves? Oh, you bet your ass we do. It's going on right now.

There are four primary discussion venues, each of which serves a slightly different purpose:

• The Anthrocon security staff mailing list. This is a list we set up each year for direct communication with the folks who are actually working security for a given Anthrocon. After the con we hold onto the list for a few months so folks can compare notes and so we can ask questions of the folks who worked the cons. If we receive a complaint about our actions or Kage/Giza ask us questions we need to compare notes on, this is where the first discussion happens.

  Typically this list is everyone on the security staff, DI or not. There's nobody who isn't security staff. As an example of how tight-assed we are about that, even Giza (who is a DI) isn't on that list. Neither is Kage, who we trust like a DI.

• The internal, DI-only mailing list. This is the members general discussion list. It gets a fair chunk of Anthrocon discussion, but more in the nature of "so how did it go?" It's also the place where the DI discuss the non-DI members of the Anthrocon staff. This discussion ranges from 'would we ask them to work with us again' to 'is this someone we want to consider for membership?' As you can imagine, this is an equally restricted list. If you're curious about membership stuff, there's a good writeup here.
• The DI Outpost, which is sorta open to the public. It's a forum not terribly unlike this one in structure, and you'll have to register to read and use it. As part of that registration process there will have to be someone who vouches for you as a human being and DI friend rather than as a spam robot. If you're interested, go to the forum, register, and tell 'em Sgt. Steve sent you. The moderators will contact me to verify, and you'll be approved as soon as I get back from vacation or whatever.

• Face to face. Seven of us caravaned back from Pittsburgh to the Ann Arbor area Monday afternoon (yeah. Monday afternoon), then stopped at Rene 'Renegade' Gobyen's and had some preliminary discussions. Rene and Carol 'Mamasan' will be coming over to my house for the 4th, and we'll continue that discussion there. There will be more of that when we work Confluence the end of July (back in Pittsburgh, oddly enough) and a huge discussion at our autumn business meeting at Conclave this fall.

Starting this weekend, Rene and I will begin writing our omnibus convention report. That's then broken down and and distributed with somewhat different content to:

• Uncle Kage and the Anthrocon board;

• The DI;
• The Anthrocon security staff, and
• the public.

The public version will likely be posted here, to the Anthrocon group on LiveJournal, to my LJ, and so forth. There are also a lot of individual LJ posts from the various members, and in such apparently irrelevant places as The Fruitbat Boardello.

I should mention that for the most part this happens for all medium to large conventions we work: Marcon, FurFright, Magfest, Conclave, Mythic Journeys, etc. Anthrocon is just one of about a dozen cons we do.

So much for our discussion.

Our reports, especially the internal one, tend to be kind of frank. Sometimes brutally frank. We don't spare ourselves much, and we take complaints seriously. We are also fairly frank about problems we see with the convention or particular attendees. Those frank comments get made more polite for things that go outside the organization, and are often removed completely from the public version.

All of this is to give you context as I address your second and third paragraphs:

People in the furry fandom may be behind the con, but that doesn't excuse us from being polite and courteous. In fact, given the negative press we've gotten in the past I would hope people would go out of their way to disprove the nasty things said about furry.

Sadly there seems to have been more incidents at this convention than at others in the past, especially around the elevators. I'm not sure this is the case, though, so I'm asking the Dorsai for their views on things. Not just about the elevators but the con in general.

I don't have hard numbers on attendee complaints about us, but my seat-of-the-pants impression is that they're up a bit from last year. A more difficult question is how that increase compares to the increase in the size of the con. We (the DI) will get more data from Kage and Giza about that that later. They, like us, first have to catch up on their sleep and do their own internal discussion.

It should be clear from all the above that there is no official stuff on the DI and Anthrocon yet. But I'm perfectly willing to hand out my own opinions.

With one exception, the Anthrocon attendees are the most co-operative, friendly, enjoyable people we deal with. We bust our asses for you folks, and we have a ball doing it. Yes, there are problems dealing with attendees now and then, but on a proportionate basis we get less flack from Anthrocon attendees than from any other. The attendees are good folks, and it's not a co-incidence that we've called on more than a few to come work other cons with us. We've invited more than a few to our annual private con, and that number has gone up every year. I expect that trend to continue, as a few names were added to my personal Good Guy list this year.

The exception isn't any specific individual, it's more of a behavioral type: extreme drunks. Anthrocon is second only to Magfest on per-capita drunk calls, but since Anthrocon is about four times bigger, the overall count is higher than Magfest. Sunday night/Monday morning we had two 911 ambulance transports and two that came close.

I don't like that. It scares the crap out of me when I see someone in that condition. I don't mean "he's gonna attack me" scared, I mean "Jesus Christ, he's gonna die" scared. Please pardon me if I don't go into more detail on why I had that feeling, let's just say I have some pretty good data.

So that will be on our agenda when we sit down with Kage later this year. But we'll approach it the way we approach everything about Anthrocon: how do we deal with this in a way that lets folks have the maximum fun while minimizing risk to themselves, to each other, and to Anthrocon itself? I think there are ways, but it's something that'll get discussed among Rene, me, Kage and Giza in about a month. Kage and Giza will then take ideas back to the concom, maybe to the public, and they'll make a decision on what if anything to do about it. It's not our (the DI) call; we are a group in service to the convention and part of the staff. We have every faith that Kage and the concom will make good decisions; they re-convince us of this every year and I don't expect that to change. It's a good con, a good concom, and good attendees. Collectively, that's what keeps us coming back every year.

In re providing a discussion place for us - we're pretty happy with using the forums as we are at the moment. I enjoy my participation, even when folks are being critical. Folks here don't tend to post "you suck" comments; they say what they didn't like and why they didn't like it. This is immensely better than the way most folks report problems, and makes for good data for us to learn from.

On pleasant surprise was how many folks saw my name badge (same as my avatar here) and recognized me from the forum. Cool! New friends, more friends. You can't beat that with a stick.

There has been a gradual emphasis - small, but growing - on Drinking in Furry Fandom. It wasn't always like this.

Back when Furry Fandom revolved around Furry Room Parties at SciFi conventions and APA compiling parties, with computer BBS's and the FIDONet relays, the Furry Fandom was, out of all the fandoms, the most like a convention of Teatotallers. It was just the nature of the writers and artists who then made up the Fandom at the time.

Now, this wasn't REQUIRED by any means; people who come to Conventions, including Furry Cons, DO do a fair amount of drinking. But mostly this was done in PUBLIC, in the hotel bar, or in some dining establishment nearby; there was a certain custom, with the cutomary safeguards, notably a bartender or bairmaid who would determine that you had had enough, and the social pressure of your peers. Furry Fandom WANTED to be thought of as equal to SciFi and Fantasy writers and artists, and while certain personalities in those spheres may be most often remembered with a shot-glass or a beer in hand, there was a certain professional image to maintain - one may drink, but one didn't get DRUNK. You maintained your control, and your pride.

Room parties _might_ feature some mixed drinks, or a scotch-tasting. I remember the last year in King of Prussia, the Lifestylers had a whiskey-tasting - my 12-year old Glenlivet didn't even make the cut, the favored drinks were these small-label southern bourbon-type things. But no one that night, if I remember, drank to inebriation. Curously enough, I was also able to attend the "Burned Furs" room party - and there were certainly folks who seemed inebriated - but not with anything that they drank or smoked - more with an idea. Yes, they had some exotic wine and a bottle of something harder, but it was to go with the Lox and peeled shrimp and cheeses that Richard Chandler had brought, and everyone was moderate in their intake, even Blumrich.

Now, we have had a year, almost 2 years, of postings which have been alcohol-related; mostly dealing with or turning to the issue of good quality beer in Pittsburgh, and where to sample it - good natured stuff, surely - but there have been more than a few posts in different parts of the forums, SUGGESTING that AnthroCon was an excuse for a big "Frat Party", and a GREAT PLACE to drink, and by which was meant to chug until stinking drunk.

AnthroCon is certainly not alone in this; I suspect I saw more drunk folks at FC this past year. But there seems to be a certain acceptance of it as NORMAL for AnthroCon.
And I am compelled to ask - how did this become acceptable? How has AnthroCon acquired this image?

I am myself no teatotaller, I am not part of any temperance movement...yet. I had a drink in the bar at the Westin, admittedly half-hoping to find, in the crowd at the bar or at a table, our chairman - in hopes of hearing a story or two in exchange for the stated price of "Buy me a drink, and I'll tell you". I like an occasional apperatif of Kahlua or Jagermiester after dinner, if in a place that serves such. And I prefer a San Miguel Pale Pilsen, or a bottle of Panama or Balboa Cerveza, or one of the really dark german brews, as opposed to whatever someone is serving in a pony keg. That bottle of Glenlivet (well - one just like it, anyway) lasted me nearly 4 years, and my mixed drinks tend to be "frou-frou" tropical drinks like Mai-tais or Daquiris, not Margaritas or screwdrivers or tequila shooters. Champagne or Gewurztreminer are my preferred wines. I admit this so that one doesn't get the impression that I think alcohol is EVIL - but still...

...My primary beverage of choice is Coca-Cola.

I see a problem arising which we may need to find a way of correcting, NOW.