Well, I’m feeling better than after my last post. Got the car back, they did what they were supposed to, and everything works OK. Good enough, though it still shouldn’t have happened to begin with.

So anyway, I’m taking a break while the dessert for ovrclokd‘s party tonight – a tasty flourless (well, almost) chocolate cake called Double Dark Chocolate Excess. I modified the recipe slightly – took out the almonds and almond extract. I also used my l33t geometry skillz to determine that a 10″ springform pan has apprxoimately 1.5 times the volume of an 8″ springform pan, and adjusted the recipe accordingly.

So, stuff going on this weekend: got friends coming over to hang out tomorrow night (I think – we’ll need to confirm with some folks when we see them tonight). Have lunch with some interesting folks on Sunday, then the Midwest FurFest staff meeting online that afternoon. Yay!

I’ve been thinking about a few things of late that I wanted to commit to LiveJournal, specifically on the topic of furry conventions. I’ve been watching the proliferation of cons and wondering what it all meant, and what was going to happen. I supposed that furry fans were well-served by the existing cons, and that each of the newer convention would be small and serve fans strictly in their immediate region – maybe a hundred or so for each.

Wow, was I wrong, spectacularly so. Furry Weekend Atlanta brought in 270. Texas Furry Con had 462. I had thought that, being directly up against Pawpet Megaplex, TFC’s attendance would be affected. Quite obviously not! I salute the staffs of those conventions – you saw a void to be filled, you worked hard to fill it, and you got the payoff. Well done!

So what does this mean to the other conventions out there? It tells me that there is room for many different conventions, some specialized, some not. The furry fans out there obviously still want more, and they want stuff that’s new and different. This, to me, is a Very Good Thing. This introduces an element of competition between the various conventions – the drive to come up with stuff that’s novel, that you won’t see at every other convention out there. Furry fans can only win with this kind of competition.

At the same time, I think it’s important to remember that there is a lot of cross-fertizilation between the conventions. Both Takaza and I are on staff for Anthrocon, in addition to working for Midwest FurFest. If we had more money at our disposal and could go to more cons, we’d probably be working those too! So don’t think that just because there’s competition it has to be bitter, or unfriendly. That would be the worst thing, because we are a small fandom, and rivalries and enmities can only hurt us. Friendly rivalries are far more constructive, and a lot more fun for all involved. And hey – remember, we’re supposed to be having fun when we do this. Yes, even when we put on conventions. It’s a hobby. It’s supposed to be fun.

And I wonder how this will affect Midwest FurFest? In the near future, I can’t see that it will affect us that much, except maybe folks seeing that, “Hey, these smaller cons are fun- let’s go to the bigger ones!” We’ve been fortunate that we don’t have any of the newer cons popping up around our November date. As I’ve noted in the past, we’re still primarily a regional convention, though the region that we’re covering seems to be expanding. If we continue on our current trajectory for attendance, we could possibly have numbers comparable to Further Confusion’s within a few years, since their numbers seem to be plateauing. We can certainly handle it, I think, but at the same time I can’t say that I’m relishing the prospect of increased attendance. More people, more problems, yay. In the meantime, all we can do is work to provide the highest quality convention possible. I think in the end, though, it’s important to remember that it’s not the numbers that matter, but the providing the best possible experience to the attendees.

Whoo. Got a bit preachy there. Sorry about that. We now return you to your regularly scheduled LJ angst and quizzes 🙂