Okay, I had a very long and elaborate answer typed out, but then I accitendtly hit the "back" button on the mouse and all was gone. Whoever at Logitech thought that it was a great idea to put a "back" button right next to the left mouse button deserves to be shot. So I'm answering telegraph style now, I don't feel like wiriting it all out again.
Schedule - Sheduling at the con was extremely poorly done, there were basically two blocks of all the panels so rather then being able to attend a few, it was a case of one or nothing. Just because I fursuit doesn't mean I won't want to go to panels about other things. It would have been so much better if they had been placed to run two or three events and then a next set of things spread out better.
What you're not taking into account is the room capacity. We need to thin the crowd out by running more events in parallel, otherwise rooms will overcrowd more than they already do.
Funny thing is that later in your posting you apply exactly the opposite reasoning to the restaurants:
Forcing things into a narrow band creates an overload on the food outlets both in and around the convention leading to delays in serving.
Same thing with the conference rooms. Having events run in 3 rooms rather than 6 at the same time creates the same kind of overload. The dinner break is not an actual "dinner break" though. It's a much needed time buffer to get everything prepared for the evening prime-time programming. We couldn't do it without that buffer. There is a LOT going on behind the scenes during that time. So I'm sorry for the restaurants actually having to work to get their money's worth
In addition, the fursuit games preliminaries were scheduled at the same time as the fursuit photoshoot.
There is simply no other timeslot that would work. We have so many fursuit-related events it's impossible to not have any of them overlap.
Also to put the fursuit games at 22:30 was pointless, I really wanted to go in for them, but that was too late really.
Where else would you have put it, with the entire afternoon being taken by the fursuit parade and concert setup going on at the same time?
In the end it became around 00:00 for a start because of the late start of the concert. So some potential audience would have either gone to the bar or bed and that would have not really been any fun to try and entertain people.
Does it occur to you that sometimes shit juts happens? In this case, dance contest overran 35 minutes because of technical failures, and then during concert rehearsals, a member of the camera crew slipped and fell off his platform, needing attention by our paramedics. I hope you do not mind that we put the well-being of our volunteers above our scheduling.
To have nothing on during the pawpets show was a bit disappointing too, not everyone wants to see puppets and such so something as an alternative would have really been nice to see.
I wouldn't mind. Find my volunteers who want to run stuff competing with the pawpetshow, and I'll give them timeslots. In the last 10 years, there weren't many. Maybe YOU want to run an event?
Also, there was no closing ceremony or feedback session? I would have thought that they would have been rather good things to see. Although I am told there was somthing said at the end of pawpets, which connects to my previous point.
No closing ceremony: Not possible because no time on saturday, and no more room on sunday. Just not worth it.
No feedback session: Because the internet exists. We get enough feedback as it is without binding staffers on sunday, when everybody is 100% busy breaking down and cleaning up.
Stairs: After the delayed group photo I went to take the stairs to my room as there was many suiters that would need to use the lifts more then I did. I went up the right hand staircase that was signed for all floors only to find that all the accommodation doors were locked. Coming back down I told a passing staff/security member who said they were only for the C level.
That was a printing error, but it was corrected during the first day. It was announced correctly at opening ceremonies, and the signs were corrected as soon as we became aware of the error. Sorry for that.
Before finding him though I naturally went to conops to tell them it was locked, only to find conops left unstaffed. With the amount of staff EF has I found this very surprising.
Con ops is still looking for volunteers to man their office. Would you be up for it? All it takes is missing 100% of the convention, not getting any sleep, working hard all day, and putting up with criticisms like this. But as I can see you are very motivated to improve the situation, I am looking forward to receiving your application for next year's convention!
Housekeeping: I don't know what happened with them, but the room servicing seemed to be getting later and later and they kept missing items needing to be done. We had our cups cleared away and not replaced on one day, the bin not emptied and beds not done until gone 18:00. For a four star hotel this was rather a surprising lapse in quality of service.
I know what happened with them. Many furries left their rooms in a state of complete mess - crates of beer standing around, dirty clothes strewn all over the floor, giant inflatables taking up all the space, piles of trash on the floor. It took housekeeping on average three times to service a room than it does with normal guests. Some attendees had to pay extra cleaning fees up to €600 for the removal of bodily fluids and drink spills.
If people do that, naturally, service quality as a whole suffers.
Although, sometimes, leaving a little tip and a small thank you note could make all the difference for the shit housekeeping (quite literally) has to put up with. Be nice to them, and they will be nice to you.
Sponsors: I don't really think as a sponsor I got value for money.
No you didn't. Because that's not the point of sponsor memberships.
Overall the I would say the social experience was excellent, but the con experience was mediocre after all the hype and build up I'd heard about EF before.
I'm sorry you had unrealistic expectations, but that's nothing we could have done anything about.
