Further Confusion 2013…
Been a couple of weeks since that little spot of craziness happened here in San Jose. 3380 people in total came together in Downtown for the 15th Futher Confusion and I was blessed with the opportunity to lead the incredibly talented and dedicated team that made it happen. It's only now that my head has stopped spinning from the madness of it all. Man, what a weekend that was.
I can not thank the volunteers who donated so much of their personal time to planning and operating the convention, words simply can't convey how appriciative I am. With out the energy of volunteers, past and present, Further Confusion would never have gotten off the ground and grown into what it is today.
Similarly, I can't thank everybody who came to Futher Confusion enough. We put this event on because we want to make a place where, for a short time at least, people can feel comfortable being their true selves in the company of friends. We're all fans of each other's creative inputs and man…just looking around the convention the array of talent we've got is stagering!
I've also got to thank our vendors and our partners for helping us along the way. Team San Jose, The Hilton San Jose and the San Jose Marriott went out of their way to help us make this year more successful than last. They've been fantastic in coming up with great ideas and ways to help us make the convention a better expeirence over all. The low priced food grab-and-goes in the Hilton and Marriott? They did surprised us with those! We couldn't have asked for more responsive, creative and fantastic organizations to work with.
I've also got a very special call out to Monoceros Media for all of the work done with Further Confusion this year. (And all years, actually!) Tugrik's shop collaborated with our Masquerade and FC:U! leads to produce some of the best award trophies we've ever given at Futher Confusion. He also fabricated all of the fursuit tags we gave out and a number of other cool nicknacks and hand outs. We know that when we go to him with a kinda crazy idea chances are high he'll be able to make it happen!
Our AV vendors, Smashwolf Productions, Dynamic Sound and Light, and Legend Theatrical, also deserve a special shout. We put a lot of effort into being able to run fun, entertaining programming on our Main Stage, without their support our dances and stage shows wouldn't have been nearly as cool as they were.
Of course I can't forget to mention PS Print, Stuart Rentals (from whom we sourced the sofas for the convention center), Offworld Designs (they print our con shirts), and so many, many more.
Crazy special thanks has to go out to very awesome individuals who contributed to two very special programs, Street Banners and Lounge Lizards. We were surprised by the significant response we got to these programs and will be running with them again for Further Confusion 2014.
Massive props to SofaWolf and Kitty Loves Monster for their contributions to Futher Confusion 2013. SofaWolf was kind enough ot offer a 10% discount to all Lounge Lizards sponsors, made a bunch of throw pillows for the lounge and were generally awesome. Kitty Loves Monster contrinuted to the waterbottles we produced this, a donation of resources by very good people whom we are extremely apriciative of!
Then we get to our two most awesome Guests, Ursula Vernon and Christopher Savino. Personally, I didn't get to spend enough time chatting with them (curse of Chairmanship, I guess) but man were they great to have out. Ursula, of course, won a Hugo last year for her creative work and I could have listened to Chis talk about animation and cartoon production all day. It's going to be interesting trying to find GoHs who are as cool as they were.
I'd be remiss if I didn't also thank Unclekage and 2_gryphon for again appearing on our Main Stage for a time, entertaining all of you with the interesting tales of their lives and unique observations on life. Sadly I didn't have the opportunity to see their presentations in person (and never got the chance to speak with either gentleman for more than two minutes at any stretch) but that's something for me to most seriously correct this coming July at Anthrocon.
We had a couple of other very special performances at Further Confusion 2013, as well. First by the amazing SuperPack Jazz Ensemble. Crazy talented group of Bay Area Furs who just last year came together as jazz enthusiats who started to play and…and good things happened. They were GOOD! One of the best moments of my day was ducking into their concert and getting lost in the joy of great music played for fun.
Next up we had Matthew Ebel and Runtt who kicked out one bloody awesome concert that was probably the most technically complex and challenging shows we've ever attempted at Further Confusion. (Matt has his own take on the challenges and complexity over on his blog - http://matthewebel.com/2013/01/25/on-the-culmination-of-a-technological-dream-gpe-live/ ) Syncronized lights, music, video, lasers, yarn cannons…and…man, if you missed it then you missed something truly epic!
I think one of the most sublime experiences that I had this year, though, was getting to spend a little bit of time with Mr. Frank H. Woodward, a writer, director and producer who came to our convention to host a screening of his documentary film Men In Suits. He gets it. He gets us. And lets face it, it's pretty damn cool that we can bring in screenings of interesting, professionally made documentaries about rubber suit monster movie actors like that!
There's so much good stuff from the weekend that I'm forgetting right now…
Chairing Further Confusion 2013 from start to finish, about 14 months of planning and effort in total, was a barking mad blur of an experience and one I wouldn't have traded for the world. For FC2014 I'll be working more directly on business related matters, I very much look forward to a more focused set of challenges. :)
I can not thank the volunteers who donated so much of their personal time to planning and operating the convention, words simply can't convey how appriciative I am. With out the energy of volunteers, past and present, Further Confusion would never have gotten off the ground and grown into what it is today.
Similarly, I can't thank everybody who came to Futher Confusion enough. We put this event on because we want to make a place where, for a short time at least, people can feel comfortable being their true selves in the company of friends. We're all fans of each other's creative inputs and man…just looking around the convention the array of talent we've got is stagering!
I've also got to thank our vendors and our partners for helping us along the way. Team San Jose, The Hilton San Jose and the San Jose Marriott went out of their way to help us make this year more successful than last. They've been fantastic in coming up with great ideas and ways to help us make the convention a better expeirence over all. The low priced food grab-and-goes in the Hilton and Marriott? They did surprised us with those! We couldn't have asked for more responsive, creative and fantastic organizations to work with.
I've also got a very special call out to Monoceros Media for all of the work done with Further Confusion this year. (And all years, actually!) Tugrik's shop collaborated with our Masquerade and FC:U! leads to produce some of the best award trophies we've ever given at Futher Confusion. He also fabricated all of the fursuit tags we gave out and a number of other cool nicknacks and hand outs. We know that when we go to him with a kinda crazy idea chances are high he'll be able to make it happen!
Our AV vendors, Smashwolf Productions, Dynamic Sound and Light, and Legend Theatrical, also deserve a special shout. We put a lot of effort into being able to run fun, entertaining programming on our Main Stage, without their support our dances and stage shows wouldn't have been nearly as cool as they were.
Of course I can't forget to mention PS Print, Stuart Rentals (from whom we sourced the sofas for the convention center), Offworld Designs (they print our con shirts), and so many, many more.
Crazy special thanks has to go out to very awesome individuals who contributed to two very special programs, Street Banners and Lounge Lizards. We were surprised by the significant response we got to these programs and will be running with them again for Further Confusion 2014.
Massive props to SofaWolf and Kitty Loves Monster for their contributions to Futher Confusion 2013. SofaWolf was kind enough ot offer a 10% discount to all Lounge Lizards sponsors, made a bunch of throw pillows for the lounge and were generally awesome. Kitty Loves Monster contrinuted to the waterbottles we produced this, a donation of resources by very good people whom we are extremely apriciative of!
Then we get to our two most awesome Guests, Ursula Vernon and Christopher Savino. Personally, I didn't get to spend enough time chatting with them (curse of Chairmanship, I guess) but man were they great to have out. Ursula, of course, won a Hugo last year for her creative work and I could have listened to Chis talk about animation and cartoon production all day. It's going to be interesting trying to find GoHs who are as cool as they were.
I'd be remiss if I didn't also thank Unclekage and 2_gryphon for again appearing on our Main Stage for a time, entertaining all of you with the interesting tales of their lives and unique observations on life. Sadly I didn't have the opportunity to see their presentations in person (and never got the chance to speak with either gentleman for more than two minutes at any stretch) but that's something for me to most seriously correct this coming July at Anthrocon.
We had a couple of other very special performances at Further Confusion 2013, as well. First by the amazing SuperPack Jazz Ensemble. Crazy talented group of Bay Area Furs who just last year came together as jazz enthusiats who started to play and…and good things happened. They were GOOD! One of the best moments of my day was ducking into their concert and getting lost in the joy of great music played for fun.
Next up we had Matthew Ebel and Runtt who kicked out one bloody awesome concert that was probably the most technically complex and challenging shows we've ever attempted at Further Confusion. (Matt has his own take on the challenges and complexity over on his blog - http://matthewebel.com/2013/01/25/on-the-culmination-of-a-technological-dream-gpe-live/ ) Syncronized lights, music, video, lasers, yarn cannons…and…man, if you missed it then you missed something truly epic!
I think one of the most sublime experiences that I had this year, though, was getting to spend a little bit of time with Mr. Frank H. Woodward, a writer, director and producer who came to our convention to host a screening of his documentary film Men In Suits. He gets it. He gets us. And lets face it, it's pretty damn cool that we can bring in screenings of interesting, professionally made documentaries about rubber suit monster movie actors like that!
There's so much good stuff from the weekend that I'm forgetting right now…
Chairing Further Confusion 2013 from start to finish, about 14 months of planning and effort in total, was a barking mad blur of an experience and one I wouldn't have traded for the world. For FC2014 I'll be working more directly on business related matters, I very much look forward to a more focused set of challenges. :)