Whoa nelly, what a con. I’m not sure if I can write this up without boring everyone to death, but here’s what I can recall, anyway…

(Note: accompanying photos were taken by tugrik; our camera naturally stayed in its case the entire convention)

We departed Chicago at about 6 AM on Wednesday morning. The drive out was pretty easy, with the exception of a 30-45 minute delay due to the wreck of an Amway bus about a mile in front of us. The huge amount of stuff we brought filled up two luggage carts, and resulted in some pretty hefty tipping. Once we got settled into our suite (on the sixth floor, yay!) it was time to go out and investigate what was what. Operations was in its typical pre-con disarray, and I identified a couple of boxes that I was going to need for Artists Alley/Con Store. Then it was down the many long hallways to Hall C, where I would be spending the bulk of the next four days.

Hall C was…freaking huge. We knew this from our visit in February, but to see it laid out before us…damn. When we first walked in, there was a Budget rental truck parked in the back corner, and it looked like a Matchbox car. The teamsters had already offloaded all of the AA/CS stuff from the Anthrocon truck, so at least I didn’t have to worry about that. Secure in the knowledge that everything was copasetic, we headed back to the hotel to sit in on the meeting with Jaime (Westin convention rep), Michaela (Westin sales rep), and the rest of the hotel staff. After that wrapped up, it was over to the convention center to meet with Carla (DLCC sales rep) and the staff there, including David, their head of security. David was awesome – he’s a huge sci-fi fanboy and was really looking forward to Anthrocon being the first fannish convention in the convention center. Dan and I tagged along as David gave Rene (head of the Dorsai contingent) a tour of the place, then I joined Sirius and Simba in their room for pizza; Dan joined us not long after.

Thursday was the big setup day, and where things start to blur together. You can be thankful that I’m not going to be able to go into anywhere near the level of detail as the above paragraphs 🙂 I got Artists Alley set up, and as usual Grandma and Grandpa Kage (and Kage’s lovely sister, Cindy) came over and set up Con Store. I spent a few hours teaching myself how to program cash registers, confirmed that the programming on the AA registers was good from the prior year, then wiped and completely reprogrammed the Con Store register. At 9 PM I had a training session with Linnaeus, DaveQat, Syn, Lander, Charlie, and Mirko to familiarize them with the AA/CS procedures, then we had an all-staff meeting at 11 PM that wrapped up close to midnight.

Friday, it was showtime! I had all of my forms, signs, registers, and merchandise in place by the end of the day on Thursday, so I was pretty confident that things were going to go smoothly. We had the first day of Artists Alley signups at 10 AM and we had 76 artists sign up for 80 seats. The artists were dispatched down to Hall C and we began the first day of sales. Despite the usual small first-day stumbles, everything proceeded well. At 5 PM we closed up and payout went smoothly, only taking 45 minutes. We spent another hour and a half or so wrapping everything up, then I went back to the room to figure out dinner. Linnaeus and I wound up ordering Chinese with Datahawk, Devin, Posicat, Wyldekyttin, and Vlad. I stopped by the WikiFur room party briefly, then stumbled back to the room for an early night.

Saturday, here we go again! I was up at 7 AM and AA signups started at 8 AM. This time around, we had 85 artists sign up for 80 seats. Y’know, I warned people again and again, be there when seats were assigned or your wouldn’t get a seat. This was the first time in two years that we had to actually use the lottery and yes, five people didn’t get a seat, but three of those were people who weren’t there during seat selection and thus lost their seat to someone on the waiting list. By now, everyone knew how the system worked and things hummed right along.

Amazingly, even with bare concrete floors and hundreds of people in the hall, the noise never got above a comfortable level. This is what it looked like when it was full. (Artists Alley is in the top left, Art Show is in the top right, and the rest is the Dealers Room – that’s me behind the AA table!). Just as a random note, I should mention that Sunitai gave me a wonderful sketch of my character (which I really need to scan) in appreciate for my work with the Alley. It was a very thoughtful gift and it really means a lot to me.

Payout at the end of the day went well again, which made me very happy, despite all the stressing I was doing. Once we wrapped up everything, at about 7:30 or so, Dan and I went back to the room and ordered from Pizza Parma. They screwed up our order and Dan’s $13 fettuccine alfredo with chicken had ziti and no chicken. Nice one, guys. Oh, and they were out of Italian sausage. Hmm, I think we’ll be avoiding them next year.

One of the highlights of the con for me was on Saturday night. We hosted a “Potables Tasting Party” with the emphasis being on quality potables – Scotch, vodka, and a wide variety of others. I would like to thank everyone who attended and made it such a great time (and I apologize if I forget anyone!): Mirko, Zenwolph, Locowolf (did I get that right?), Gatcat, Kenket, Whitefox, DaveQat, Syn, Xydexx, Camstone, Rollie, Cobalt, and Giza. Giza brought a truly horrible, horrible unidentified Chinese liqueur (“It tastes like minty burned rubber”) that became an initiation drink of sorts. That nastiness aside, the evening was delightful, with some excellent drinks, and wonderful company (in spite of the fact that the air was damn near combustible with all the alcohol in it). Only one person needed an escort back to their room, though I wasn’t exactly going to be out running any marathons 🙂 I wasn’t using those brain cells anyway.

Sadly, I didn’t quite set the alarm properly and I woke up at 7:49 AM on Sunday, with Artists Alley signups beginning at 8 AM. ACK! Fortunately, the Dorsai were able to keep folks from revolting and I was only 20 minutes late. No problems getting everyone a seat this time – we had maybe 65 artists sign up. By this point, everything was on autopilot, which was just fine by me. Once we got everything situated, Dan informed me that I was getting a massage from the massage therapist set up in the Dealers Room whether I wanted one or not. Oh darn 🙂 It took him a half-hour to work out the kinks in my back, and I still have some bruises where he was hitting my trigger points, but wow – that was exactly what I needed! At around noon the fursuit parade came through the hall, passing first above the room on a balcony. They then came downstairs, wound through the hall, then eventually stopped at a balcony, where a photographer set up on a bridge across the Allegheny River snapped this shot. Just too cool.

Payout was a breeze, and I think it was the fastest one that we have ever done – 32 minutes, form beginning to end. Once we wrapped that up, it was time to tear down. As always, Grandma Kage did a remarkable job of taking care of the Con Store, and Mirko and Linnaeus helped me out as we boxed up the Artists Alley equipment. At 7 PM, it was time to head over to the staff dinner in the hotel, which once again was not “Dan-friendly”. He opted to head back to the convention center while we ate and talked with the Dealers Room staff about possible improvements for next year. Once we finished up I went back over to the convention center and helped Dan get the last of the equipment out and lugged it back up to the hotel. Although Dan was feeling somewhat under the weather, we went by the Dorsai wrap-up “meeting” to find everyone in fine spirits (as well as some fine spirits being imbibed). Alas, I had done my drinking the night before and I was exhausted, so I ducked out early and snuck back to our nice, quiet hotel room. Dan stuck around and had a good time chatting with the Dorsai as well as Peter Morwood, who can spin quite a tale.

Not much to say about Monday. We packed everything up and managed to get out of the room by noon (after we found out that we actually didn’t have to be out until 3 PM). The drive home was uneventful, with the exception of a truck having a blowout in the eastbound lanes of the Indiana Toll Road just as we passed him. I pulled to the shoulder in time to see a huge cloud of dust go up as he careened off the right side of the road. We considered seeing if we could help but people closer were quickly stopping and running over, so we’d only have been in the way. Linnaeus was just a few miles behind us and remarked that it was truly impressive – he must have rolled, because the top of the trailer was torn off. Anyway, as we drove, Dan was feeling worse and worse, so I took a little extra of the driving. He’s home now with a fever and some nasty upper respiratory congestion; it’s off to the doctor for him tomorrow. We pulled in at around 8 PM and got unpacked in short order. After a restless night of sleep here I am again at work, and feeling very, very tired.

So that was Anthrocon 2006! It was huge. It was a shift in the convention paradigm, the first furry convention held in a convention center. It was also notable that of the 2,489 attendees, over 2,000 of them picked up their badges on Thursday. Yes, Thursday. Ye gods. Looks like we’re becoming a four-day convention whether we want to or not.

As for me? I got up early each day and went to bed late. I worked 12- and 14-hour days. I didn’t see a single bit of programming. I have blisters on my feet from all the standing and walking. And you know what? I loved it. I look forward to doing it again, if they’ll have me. I want to thank the folks who volunteered their time for Artists Alley and Con Store: Grandma and Grandpa Kage, Cindy, danruk, bullethc, daveqat, jimcyl, siriuswolfstar, linnaeus, and roolander. Thanks also to those who lent a hand at the last minute: mirkowuff and Rooth (Danruk, does he have an LJ?). Your help is much appreciated, and don’t be surprised if I come to you next year to see if you’re interested in being on staff 😉

And tonight: it’s time to rest up, relax, and hopefully catch up on lost sleep! I hope everyone had a great time at Anthrocon, and if you missed out