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[Tillikum]

Only little comment about EF prime: The transmitting/ streaming team needs some sort of feedback about what arrives in the room ... there seemed to have been a loose connector somewhere so transmission was sketchy at times. And when you stream sth with voice: please turn down the background

That was indeed a problem that was beyond our control. Apparently some of the distributor-units in the hotel where faulty and the company that installed them couldn't find the faulty units. This, for example, lead to the problem that the entire Wing 3 couldn't watch it. This should be resolved by EF22.

As for the background music issue. I guess you are refering to Enter the Arena - this took a while longer until we actually got feedback from you guys since we can't monitor the stream-audio during live shows.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Rishary]

I had already written a report here:

https://forum.eurofurence.org/index.php/topic,6541.0.html so feel free to merge if you want.

Overall it was an incredible experience, here are some nitpicks though:

The setup for the dance contest was far from optimal and many people could not see anything beyond the head of the dancers. The screen didn't really help. Perhaps an elevated stage?
While the fursuit games were fun some games and judging criteria were on the weak side.

[djem]

Overall I had a really great time at EF, had a blast Djing at the Fursuit Friendly dance ( 22h30 to 00h00 was me ) and finaly able to bring some lasers ! Hope you enjoyed all.


I would just like to point out a few things :

- I had no EF Prime at all in Wing 3 floor 2, nothing at all :p

- I tryed 2 days in a raw to enter the fursuit photoshoot, and turned out the queu was insane. Maybee having a second stage for photo to double the amount of people able to take part would help a lot ?

- While I like enter the arena in the center of the room, having dancers on floor level made it hard to see if you waren't on the first 4 rows I saw people standing on there chairs to be able to watch. Moving it on stage or on podest would help a lot

- Moving the dead dog party back to Paris ? Having it in the club stage was nice, but made it far to reach with nothing in between the lobby and that room. Seems like people where all over the place with nothing really going on

[Ralphie Raccoon]

Overall I think the con was very well managed (even if I didn't manage myself very well!) but I do have a few ideas for improvements:

• Room Access - If it is legally possible, can we please get the all the staircase doors unlocked, so we aren't forced to use the lifts? This would also allow those who need the lifts more (suiters and those with luggage) to use them without having to wait so long. Would also be some handy exercise!
• Sponsor Goodies - I think you need a new sticker supplier, the adhesive on mine wasn't very good, and I couldn't get it to stick to my plastic case. Also I missed picking up my sponsor pin, but that was probably my fault.
• EF Prime stream - I think the addition of a simple 24h clock to the banner would be a plus. It's difficult to keep track of time when you're in suit, so being able to see the time in as many locations as possible is very helpful. You could also include the "delays and reschedules" in the feed as a sort of ident that appears every 2 minutes or so, and perhaps some other idents displaying official announcements and such.
• Photoshoot - Better communication with the queue so people don't leave empty handed after waiting 30+ minutes. Having two separate lines for 10 and 20 minute slots would probably help with this, and perhaps some sort of "slots remaining" counter (manual or electronic) so furs who have no hope of getting a slot don't queue up and waste their time. It might be worth having separate quotas for 10 and 20 minute slots, and alternating between the lines. If the 20 minute line is empty and the quota not full, then the slot(s) can be split and taken by 2 furs in the 10 minute line, and vice versa.
• Fursuit Lounge - More Pegs Plz! (Mystifur already knows about that one). Also, if some insulated ice buckets could be left out, so furs could add their own ice to their drinks. Finally, there needs to be a equal number of tables for heads and paws/feet, the latter was almost always fully occupied as there was only one of them, so the rules were bent and the heads tables used instead.

That's it for now. I'll edit it if I think of any more. But overall, great job guys!

[Cheetah]

This was my 14th consecutive Eurofurence, and I have every intention of coming back next year. For all the things that go wrong, and that I might complain and whine about provide useful feedback on, that fact there is probably the most important one one of all.

I'm glad to hear that ... I'll give a little information regarding the things I know of.

It was a bad idea to put the artists lounge into a room which shared lighting conditions with the room which hosted the non-DOPE pawpet show. The moment they started, any one trying to use the artists lounge was plunged into darkness. Quite frankly this was a disrespectful thing to do to the artists contingent.

It was in the first place an accident ... we didn't know you could not switch the lights individually until, well, we found out that very moment.

During the 12PM Thursday SIG in room 3, I arrived a few minutes late to find the door was locked. After several other people joined me, I went to security who assured me that the door was not locked. [...] If this is a characteristic of the function room doors, even when they are booked and paid for, then convention security should probably know about it. Otherwise please ask the hotel to exercise a little more care when configuring the room locks for next year.

That was also certainly not intended. The thing is, the doors are fire escape doors, so they ALWAYS open from the inside. So you can have doors that are technically locked, but open. As soon as they snap shut, you can only open them from the inside. So someone must accidently locked the door, but not closed it, and since there is no indication wether its locked or not as long as it's open, the conops person in question must have thought it's open. We'll have to double check next time. When in doubt ... nobody will hold it against you if you knock.

Travel:
I haven't actually looked at the travel section of the EF website for several years. Having just checked I was very surprised to see we don't seem to have one.

Then check again, because we actually have one -> http://www.eurofurence.org/EF21/hotel/travel

... and frequent Updates in the Forum -> https://forum.eurofurence.org/index.php/topic,6344.0.html

[Vector]

Registration : just perfect, fast & effective. Congrats to reg team.
Small improvement possible : the machine for punching holes in key cards should more easily accessible.

Opening Ceremony : nice music & intro video. I would love to see that ceremony as a start of a story (CFz did an amazing thing to make it less boring), board directors speeches can be boring sometimes. :/

80s dance : I had a very nice time there but I would love to hear more great classical songs from the 80s next time.
And please please don't put typical 90s songs (ie "I Like to Move It" - 1993) in your 80s set, it kills the entire mood/feeling of a 80s dance.

Dutch Angel Dragon meeting : I learnt a lot about the AD dragons there. It was very well conducted. Next time try to have offline PDF/HTML pages & videos because unfortunately the internet was crappy during the panel.

Fursuit photoshoot : great idea of this QR code receipt. Too bad you can't choose the exact hour & time. Definitely nicer setup than EF20 and the headshoot idea is nice too ! Keep up the good work !
To allow more people to get a pic, would it be possible to allow photographers access outside of the photoshoot time slots?

Breathing Life into Fursuiting : although it was his first time, Blastdav's panel was very interesting. Please make more of this !

Group Photo : maybe having clear instructions from a megaphone from the ground would help next time.

Fursuit group photo : not a very good time there. People were stuck in a massive queue at the door not able to move or to have space to breathe. :/  
I can't  imagine how it was hard for unexperimented suiters to wait at the entrance & then wait for the pic itself. The fursuit staff tried to provide fans to cool down the queue but it was not effective at all because of the massive & dense queue.
If the main stage is not totally ready yet, you should allow fursuiters to enter the room ASAP and make them wait in a corner of the main stage or make them wait in the fursuit lounge only (same procedure as the fursuit parade)

Dancing panel : please make more of this ! Great time there. ^^

Fursuit Parade : nice & very fast. ^^ Maybe you could offer a small waterproof FM radio + earpieces as a gift to Sponsors next year to fursuiters.

Fureoke : great songs & nice memories there. There is a room to improve sound next year and maybe put the main screen further so it won't be blocked by singers.

Motorfurs meeting : nice cars there, too bad that the ground is dirty and in a very bad shape.

Enter the Arena : lot of good & different performances and no visible technical problems this year. Too bad it was nearly impossible to see the dancers. :/ Put the public on removable grandstands would help (I know it would take a lot of space and money too).

Closing ceremony : I loved the idea of that small film of the convention, very nice editing there. ^^ Having some feedback from the charity was very nice too. Let's make the number & stats things more shorter next time.

Big Blue Dance : well, I have to admit I never got into this. :/ Fortunately there was an alternative dance in the club.

Dead dog party : best dance for me. Congrats to the DJs.

-

Hotel : very nice place as always with an effective & nice staff.
I really hope that the hotel extension will have a swimming pool. ^^'

Dog permit : some of my friends were really pissed off to see that some VIPs & people from staff were allowed to bring their dogs (although they're not obviously guide dogs for blind people). They were missing their dog and they had to find a solution to find a place and someone to take care of it during the convention.

Bar : I know I'm in Germany but no cider of any kind at all ? :/

Beer Garden : lovely place to drink a beer especially on a hot summer night. ^^ The campfire is one of my favorite places. Congrats to the setup team !

Fursuit lounge : large mirrors in the entrance and digital clocks easily visible in room, large fans with benches & plenty of water (although I almost had no drink there) : perfect ! I was just missing "The Blade" from CFz & the fursuit lounge seems to be at 1 km from the lobby with damn stairs. ^^'
Fortunately the little Oasis was much closer to the lobby.
          
Main Stage : the light show (lasers & stuff) was amazing ! I just find the main stage very dark sometimes : especially during the fursuit friendly dance, it was not fursuit friendly at all. ^^'
I also did not felt very secure when this guy moving at high speed on a wheeled machine was filming very close to me and the other fursuiters.

The theme : the conbook, website & trailer videos were great but the only place I really felt a little bit the theme was the main stage. I really hope that next year more convention space will be used to display the theme.

Staff on wheels : for me, the real theme of EF21 was the song "They see me Rollin', they Hatin'" XD

EF Prime : good stuff there but problems sometimes on the stream.

Schedule : you should allow photoshoot organisers access to the EF smartphone app (with a special tab) & EF schedule on screens/EF Prime.

Dealers' Den : I had the feeling it was lacking of space and  the Art show had too much of it. Maybe space could be gained by reducing the space between the Main stage and the artshow itselft (aka the queue room to Main Stage).

Fursuit mobile water service : very nice idea ! Please keep it next year !

[Cairyn]

Maybee having a second stage for photo to double the amount of people able to take part would help a lot ?

I guess many people would like that, but we'd need:

• a room (the Photoshoot requires a high ceiling for the light trussing) - this is fairly difficult since at the moment the Photoshoot blocks part of the Art Show already
• a team (or several, to double the working times) - photographers with skills and willing to dedicate their time
• the equipment (to be used in parallel)

I wouldn't even dare to guess what's hardest to come by.

[Ragear]

me again,

I forgot (and probably have forgotten even more :/) the water porters! You are the real MVPs! Thank you for that service!!

on the photoshoot: let's face it: there were ~1k suiters ... 6-10shoots can be handled per hour ... there are 3 days @ 8hrs each ... do the maths, folks, bearing in mind that the photo team is no less than heroic but also wants to see the con from another angle than a 50mm lens ...

Ragear

[Reshi]

EF21 was my second EF and it was pretty fun this year as well ! I'm still very new to furrycons so it wasn't as exciting this year as it was last year, with my very first con ever. But I still had tons of fun and will return next year ! Sorry if this ends up being super long !

The good stuff:
- Hotel check in/check out was quite easy again, had to wait about 15 minutes to check out because of the long queue at 12pm but I was in no hurry so I didn't mind it much. The room card had a cool design on it too
- Stage events were on time or had very minimal delays
- Breakfast <3 Even tho they were always out of shredded wheat when I got to the breakfast (only got to eat them once, I guess I just need to go eat earlier ^^)
- Fursuit lounge was nice and roomy, even tho it was more farther away from the lobby than last year, it was easy enough to get to for me
- Registration was fast and easy even when I got my badge on Wednesday instead of Tuesday when I actually arrived. Got my fursuit badge very quickly as well, even tho it had to be made on-site due me not getting a pic of my suit in time (I had to finish the head in my room on Tuesday lol...)
- Security guys with water supply was such a good thing to have, seriously every time I started to feel tired/thirsty, there was a person with water supply almost sprinting over to me asking if I needed water ! Thank you so much, you guys seriously made suiting so much easier when I couldn't get to the lounge !
- Dealers den was great again, even tho I was sad that Soapasaurus had to cancel in the last minute. But thanks to that artist who had Steven Universe themed stickers on sale, I forgot to pick up your business card but my girlfriend and I loved the stickers !
- Dance competition was great, it was fun to attend again
- Art show was great as well, I forgot to check it out last year and now I have a huge urge to make something for next year !
- All the dances were lots of fun, even tho I didn't attend Fursuit Friendly Dance at all (I was supposed to but I got tired that evening and just went into my room and watched it over EF Prime ^^')

The okay-ish stuff:
- Not a big thing, but it bothered me that the water in the fursuit lounge was a lot of times more room temperature than actually cold. But that is just a small nitpick and it happened to be like that only couple times when I were in the lounge, and I visited it a lot
- My room card worked once, when we got to our room I was able to open it but after that, it never worked. But as my room mate who was with me 100% of the time had a working card so I didn't feel the need to go ask for a new card (if I was alone or with some other friend etc, I would have gotten new one right away of course)
- The motorfurs meet place's ground was in very bad condition and I kept almost falling over when I visited it in my suit... I know con staff won't be able to do much about it but decided to mentoin it
- EF Prime was good but it was spazzing out sometimes, but I see it has been discussed about already here ^^ But the playlist or whatever for the videos seemed to have very few different videos, as I would see the same ones all the time (I don't mind but seeing the same video three times in one hour was kinda annoying)

The bad stuff:
- This is the only thing about the con itself that I was feeling very uncomfortable about: My friend has a stalker who was an attendee. Me and my roommate told him to back off as he was getting bit too touchy-feely and told that we would report him to the security if he didn't stop and then he left our friend alone, we never really got his badge number or name as we wanted to report him anyway but he seemed to be harmless after that. But still it left me bit bothered, my fault that I didn't get to report him but next time if there's someone like this, I will report them right away or as soon as I can. And my friend is still happy to come again next year so it didn't hinder her con experience.

The stuff that was awful but had nothing to do with the con (= I fricked up stuff by myself lmao):
- I lost my passport on Tuesday and had a panic attack because of it. Gladly it was in the Tegel airport's lost and found in the end, but it was awful :'D So I wasn't able to get my registration on the early-arrival day + I spent the whole day panicking and standing in the luggage tracking/lost and found queue lmao. I'll be more careful next time haha


Other than that, trying to get over PCD and waiting anxiously for next year ! ^^

[Kuuto Fox]

I loved the con, this was my first furry convention yet, and I'm real sad it ended so soon!
My favorite thing besides the fursuiters and all the lovely art was the variety of panels and how well they were spread out! They made time fly even more.
If I could ask for one thing with the next con, I'd REALLY like a panel or something dedicated to just finding some people to go around the con with. I really wish I could've made more friends, however being as shy as I am, it's a huge challenge for me to get a buddy or two to hang out with short of flat out saying "be my friend!".
I feel like I couldve enjoyed the con so much more if I HAD found a few furs to hang around with, and I think a meet n greet panel would be great to help out those new and quiet furs who are in a similar situation.

[Pinky]

The only (hopefully constructive) criticism I have was the charity auction.
Namely how the painted Charity bottles, filled with homemade cherry liqueur were handled (and another auction with some pictures that were auctioned off together instead of seperately).
We never really could see the artwork on the bottles (which was great by the way), the artists sadly were never stated and they were auctioned off together...resulting in a quite low bid.
We (so everybody on the con) collected so much money ... but it could have been more. I remembered the charity auction from I think EF19. There was a clock with several pictures of different artists and things were handled in a similar way, resulting in a similar low bid.
I know time was running out and Kage got rushed, because of other items that took more time. Still maybe it's a good idea for the future to plan a lil more time for charity. I think everybody who gives out art or items for the charity auction should have their gifts treated with enough time to get the most of it for charity (especially if people spend a lot of time to create those things).
Just as a lil and (hopefully) friendly suggestion  

Hi Ghostbear

The charity auction is the result of cooperation between a lot of departments and even some people who are not in any department or officially work for the convention (such as Kage). Therefore, I cannot address all your points, but I will try to address the ones I can, the ones that relate directly to the charity department.

The artists were never stated: Let's go through the possible causes one by one. When the bottles were submitted, were the artists mentioned there? If not then we have no way of knowing who they are. We make a description for each item, and they have to be short. So possibly the artists might have been omitted there. It could also be that they were submitted and put in the description, but that Kage didn't mention them due to time pressure or having to deal with so many items. Sadly I wasn't at the auction as I had other things to tend to, so I don't know how things happened.

Items were bundled: We sometimes bundle items since we can only have a few items at the auction. Either it can be smaller items that together make up a big enough item that it merits one of the few auction slots. Or it can be similar items where instead of only selling one via the auction and the others through the lottery, we decide to bundle them to "wow" people and make the bidding go high. Yes there is a chance it might make less money than unbundled, but we also sometimes see the opposite effect, that the price goes higher for a set than the individual pieces could have gotten. These things are hard to predict, it really depends on the crowd. Plus, we might only be able to auction one item then, the others would go to the lottery.

Incidentally, let me just say that if something goes to the lottery, that could very well be exactly because it is an awesome item which will help us sell lots of lottery tickets because everyone wants it. I heard one or two people ask why their items were lottery items and not auction items, and I just want to say that there is no pattern of size of impressiveness to that. We need "eye-catchers" for the lottery booth too. And this year, we sold out of lottery tickets at the lottery booth! That never happened before. (You guys rock so much!)

Lastly, you brought up two very good points which I have already discussed with some other departments and we will also have a meeting about internally in my team. The first was time for the charity auction. Right now we basically get what time is left after the general auction. But we could have a fixed amount of time like in some previous years. I will look into the pros and cons of that. The second point was treating donated items with respect. I think we do that already, we really try to sell them for the highest amount (remember this is also in our interest). But we will have a general discussion about Donors' Rights, i.e. how much of a say donors get in what happens to their items. I honestly don't know what to say or think about it right now as I'm dead tired and need to hibernate for a few months like your species does    But it's certainely worth discussing, which we will.

I want to thank you for your feedback. I hope you are generally satisfied with us. I am taking your points seriously, so even if you do not get a 5-page report on decision outcomes or anything like that, I want you to know that I have heard you and I am listening.

See you next year I hope.

[Ray Liehm]

The only (hopefully constructive) criticism I have was the charity auction.
Namely how the painted Charity bottles, filled with homemade cherry liqueur were handled (and another auction with some pictures that were auctioned off together instead of seperately).

As the person directly responsible for the Charity Auction, I feel that I need to add my two cents here (I apologise if I repeat a few things that have already been said). The problem with the Charity Auction is that there is only a limited amount of time in which to sell the items, given the two hour timeslot and that the time has to be shared with the general Art Auction as well. Because of that, we can only accept a certain maximum number of items to Charity Auction, and sometimes this means that items have to be grouped together, in order to fit them in and to give them the best chance of raising as much money at Auction as possible. I did my best to let the donators know that their items may be grouped this way, and the donator of the bottles was informed that they were likely to be auctioned off together (along with the advertising panels that were also donated later). They made a natural set together, and it allowed more items to make it to Auction overall.

We never really could see the artwork on the bottles (which was great by the way)...

All items accepted to Charity Auction are displayed in their own special area of the Art Show in the days before the Auction, so that anyone interested in bidding on them on has a good opportunity to see them beforehand. Given the size of the bottles on stage, it would have been impossible for the entire audience to get a good look at them during the Auction itself (short of calling for the runner to bring the bottles closer), but their images were displayed on the large projector screen over the stage as they were auctioned off, which is the best we can do under the circumstances.

...the artists sadly were never stated...

The artists who contributed to the art on the bottles were listed on the projector screen, and unfortunately there were so many artists who contributed to the advertising panels that it was impossible to list them all on the screen. Uncle Kage was given full information about the artists on both the bottles and the panels on an auction runsheet, but due to the interruption from the audience during the sale of those items which forced the auction to be split in half, and the fact that he had less than 2 minutes to sell each item in the Auction overall, I really can't blame him for thinking on his feet and skipping the runsheet in order to keep things running on time. I agree that it is unfortunate that the artists were not acknowledged, but this was not our intention, and in a live, fast-paced event like the Auction, mistakes do sometimes happen.

and they were auctioned off together...resulting in a quite low bid.

As others have said already, sometimes bundling items together can actually raise the amount for which they are sold (as in, they sell for more than they would have individually). For example, the Furry Fantasy CD set was originally donated as two separate CDs, but together they sold for 550 Euros. Deciding which items to group and which to leave separate, and which items to accept to Auction and which items to turn down can be a very tricky process, as it can be hard to know what the audience will like. We do our best to give every donation the best chance it can get to raise as much money as possible, but sometimes the crowd just doesn't bite.

Still maybe it's a good idea for the future to plan a lil more time for charity.

This is a good point, and it is definitely something we'll be thinking about during our planning and review for next year. I would personally like to see more time given to the Charity Auction, but we will need to see what our options are and whether it is possible.

I think everybody who gives out art or items for the charity auction should have their gifts treated with enough time to get the most of it for charity (especially if people spend a lot of time to create those things).

Please know that we value and appreciate every donation of prizes that we receive for the Eurofurence Charity Auction and Lottery Booth. It's in part because of these donations that Eurofurence is able to raise as much money for our charity each year as we do, and we try to give every donation the best chance of raising money for charity as possible (I think I already said that, but it bears repeating). In fact, we had so many impressive donations this year that we even added an improvised Charity Panel to the Art Show so that some of our donations that wouldn't fit into the regular Charity Auction could still have a chance to sell on a silent bidsheet along with the other items in the Art Show. This is another possibility we'll be looking into repeating next year.

In closing, thank you for giving us your feedback. We'll take on board as much as we can to improve for next year, and I hope that we've been able to clear up some of your concerns.

[BlueBerry]

I'm quite relaxed at cons, so a lot of things do not bother me. The one thing that really bothered me was the preparation of chairs and the projection on the canvas at enter the arena. If you did not was sitting in the first two lines, then you could not see the dance floor. Standing did not help to see anything. To look at the canvas was pointless, because due to the light and fog nothing could be seen. So either next year the fursuiter dancing on the stage or you build grandstands.

[Hurga]

- I had no EF Prime at all in Wing 3 floor 2, nothing at all :p

As far as I know, no one had a working EF Prime in Wing 3 - and that would be my biggest complaint about this EF (I had a blast otherwise). I've been told it's been the hotel's fault, and I really hope EF gets a discount on the price of using the TV infrastructure for that (so they have an incentive to fix it for next time).

[Runo]

Dog permit : some of my friends were really pissed off to see that some VIPs & people from staff were allowed to bring their dogs (although they're not obviously guide dogs for blind people). They were missing their dog and they had to find a solution to find a place and someone to take care of it during the convention.

The frustration is understandable. It's just that with a few people, EF has the options of either negotiating a special permit for their dogs with the hotel, or have them not come at all. And since they're usually quite important for the convention, there's not really a choice. On the other paw, a general permit for dogs is not possible any longer either, it just didn't work out well in the past. So there's really not much EF can do about this point, unfortunately.