Ladies and Gentlefurs!
Are you a regular congoer? Would you be interested in some information about developments in the convention/event scene in Europe? Then we have a little announcement to make!
For years the security teams of Eurofurence and Confuzzled have been working partially together and exchanged information when necessary. Due to the reputation that both teams earned during the last years, the staff of some new conventions and events came to us, asking for advice or even for help. This way a network of friends began to form, friends that are responsible for the safety of furries at large events. During that development the desire to improve communication within this ever growing group became stronger, and the demands for professionalism and knowledge increased significantly. Until this day we gave our very best and we were praised by people like Uncle Kage or Cheetah and honoured as “the best security ever” at EF. This led many of you -who attended Confuzzled or Eurofurence in the last years- to come to us security guards just to thank us and flatter us even more with your kind words. In the name of the security teams of Confuzzled and Eurofurence we'd like to say thank you to all of you! Those moments make all our effort worth it!
Nevertheless it isn't easy to maintain the high standards we've set for ourselves without proper means of information exchange. The call for an “Information Backbone” for our security teams eventually ended in the idea of connecting all security teams of the events we work on.
After more than two years of preparations and work we proudly introduce to you: The project MI:3!
Experience gathered during the last years at the participating events has shown that keeping a furry convention/event safe is not only a tremendously responsible job, but also differs a lot from security work outside of the furry-scene. Therefore reliable teams consisting of members of the furry community are necessary to ensure the safety of all attendees, without interfering with the “normal” furry-behaviour. Unfortunately this also means that many members of the security teams are not trained to be security-guards and hence need to constantly learn and improve their own skills in that matter. Basically MI:3 strives to support all members of security-teams at fandom-events in that regard.
The MI:3 project was originally started by “Codewolf”, “Gyroplast” and “Dhary”, the leaders of the security teams of Eurofurence and Confuzzled. During the early planning stages of the MI:3 group, Drayygon, chief of security for ScotiaCon, also joined in and the name MI:3 was born. By now the LondonFurs-Meet as well as the Frantic Eufuria are also protected by MI:3 teams.
With the creation of MI:3 we have established an umbrella organisation for all furry-event security teams throughout Europe, combining our efforts, knowledge and experience to optimize our work for our community. To achieve this, the project provides shared communication platforms, knowledge and databases as well as shared personnel pools. This way the security teams of Eurofurence, Confuzzled, ScotiaCon, LondonFurs and Frantic Eufuria share information, experience, resources and even personnel. With this project we hope to further improve the security -and our service- to our community at events, and allow our teams to work more closely than ever before.
We believe that the positions afforded to us acting as a security team for furry events is a privilege, and one in which our personnel must act responsibly, and expect to be accountable. These are values we feel have not been adequately promoted amongst furry security teams at some events in the past, and one of our goals is to help change this. To that end, we will be offering our experience and personnel to other events in future, as well as accepting applications from other security teams to join MI:3 as part of a wider effort to build better security teams for our community.
For you as an attendee of one of our serviced conventions or events, this will simply mean that you will see even nicer and better informed security guards than before(or hopefully you won't see them
). Our goal is your fun and enjoyment and we will do everything we can to make your furry experience even more enjoyable and safe.
If you have any questions or if you just want to give us some feedback, feel free to contact us here or via our informational website
https://www.mi-3.eu/Thank you for reading, we hope to welcome you at one of our serviced events soon!
-MI:3 team