Just a quick con report for the heck of it...

Fur the 'More this year was my first experience with being close enough to a con that we could just go for the day instead of having to get a hotel room, and since we were trying to save as much time and money as possible for RF in September, we figured just heading in for Saturday was the easiest way to go. It made the con feel a little less finished for me, but on the other hand I don't really feel like I missed out on too much, except a couple panels on Friday that might have been interesting (though at least one of them wound up being canceled).

The morning started off okay -- we got to the con and got registered quickly and easily, then explored around to see where the panels were being held. And then the fire alarm went off, and the hotel had to be evacuated for something like half an hour, so by the time we got back in the hotel, it was something like 10:30, and my first panel (Furry Writing for Experienced Authors) was technically more than half over. That first panel sort of had me feeling off-balance the whole time, mostly because of not starting on time thanks to the fire alarm, but in the end it went all right, being kind of an open discussion anyway, and with some good questions from the attendees and input from Phil. Hopefully people got something out of it, anyway. >^_^<

After that came the traditional publishing panel with Ianus, which was eventually interrupted by another fire alarm. (Apparently the first one might have been because of someone at the con, but the second one was a leaking sprinkler pipe?) That one was over more quickly, though, so we were able to pick up where we left off. Once that was over, I had some time to set up for my reading (in this case, "set up" meaning "put out my business cards and mailing list signup sheet, plus the plate of candy"). When I was originally submitting the reading for the schedule, I told them it was okay to put it in some dead area of the schedule, since I haven't read work in front of anybody for years and my main reason for wanting to do this reading was to have some practice for RF so I wouldn't completely fall on my face there in front of probably even more people. I told them, "if I wind up reading to, like, 2 people and my husband, I'll be okay with that."

The universe has a way of taking me at my word, it seems, since that's exactly the audience I had. XD But again, drawing a crowd wasn't the main goal, and it was fun, and I think the guys enjoyed it. (The reading was originally scheduled right after the fursuit parade, but with the fire alarms throwing the schedule off, I'm guessing the parade was maybe still going on? I have no idea when the parade actually happened; maybe it was on time.) After that, we went to the hotel restaurant to get something to eat, then back just in time for my last panel of the day, Self E-Publishing, with Ianus. This was definitely the most successful panel of the day, and even though it was the first time we'd covered the topic, I think everyone got some good information out of it, so that was a nice way to end the panels for me.

After that, a quick tour of the dealers' room and Artists' Alley (some nice stuff in both, but nothing I couldn't live without this year), and then, since we had time to kill, we checked out the fursuit dance competition finals, which were fun to watch. From there, we hung out in the lobby waiting for the Matthew Ebel concert to open up. We were finally in line and they were just about to open the doors when they announced that no bags or open containers would be allowed inside, which was a problem for the backpack I'd been carrying around all day. They said if you had a bag you weren't going to be let in, so you should leave it in your room.

Um, yeah. Our room. Which we didn't have, nor did we have any friends around whose room we could have used. We considered taking my bag back to the car, but because of where we'd had to park (and not having a hotel keycard to get in and out of all the entrances) it would have probably taken us at least 25 minutes or so to walk to the car and back, and we'd wind up missing a big chunk of the concert anyway. (Why they couldn't just search people's bags for whatever they were trying to keep out, I don't know, since there weren't that many people waiting to get in, but whatever. I still don't know what the problem was, since I had a backpack at last year's concert with no problem, and carried it in this year to the same room for the fursuit dance competition, and nobody batted an eye. I know in the past Matthew Ebel's outright encouraged people to record his concerts, so I don't think they were checking for recording devices. I'm assuming they were looking for alcohol, mentioning open containers, but again, a 10-second check of my bag would have shown I didn't have that. And heck, I would have even emptied my water bottle if they wanted to pretend to be airport security.)

So at this point, we were both frustrated (especially wondering why they hadn't bothered to announce this earlier and instead waited until literally the last couple minutes before opening the doors). The concert was already starting an hour late because of the schedule problems, and we knew we still had a long drive ahead of us to get back home that night. So, since we were both tired, we decided to just skip the concert and head home, which made for ending the day on kind of a sour note, but for the best.

All in all, though, not a bad day, and enjoyed the panels and seeing people -- both the ones I already knew and meeting others in person for the first time. I still do think I prefer smaller cons, even if it does mean less turnout for events. >^_^<