Talk:Furry fans flock to Further Confusion 2007

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Original reporting

I am a member of the furry fandom, and founder of WikiFur. I am not a member of the convention staff or otherwise associated with AAE or Further Confusion. I was present for Friday through Monday of the convention and attended most of the large events - this article was written largely from my memory and photographic documentation of these events. (I also wrote most of furry convention at Wikipedia, which helped a bit. :-) GreenReaper 05:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

AAE board meeting notes

These unedited notes were taken on the Monday after the convention proper, at the annual Anthropomorphic Arts and Education board meeting GreenReaper 05:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Parent corpopration for Furtgher Confusion. 501c3 non profit

Handle hotel contract negotiations - more than a year before
Convention itself held by the con committee - charity and exec committee
People submit bids in september/october for the following year (ie 2008 in 2006).
Mornings get light attendance - meetings are required by law.

During the HIss and Purr they address the larger body of people. "We are in a period where we are straining this hotel's space, and our options are not entirely optimal due to the hotel size in this area"

Laura Cherry
Brent Edwards (Chip_Unicorn)
Leon, (Mitra)
Peter Torkelson (WhiteFire)
Lee Strom (Chairo)

David Cooksey, and Jeff Ferris not atending.

Chris "Bos'n" Bartlett, Further Confusion 2008 chairman to be held in this hotel. dates to be determined by contract already signed, can't remember. Someitme around now. 5 for, 0 against, 2 abstensions. 

Finally paid off all the art show panel loan. 

Peter Torkelson, The idea is if for some reason, say an earthquake happens, it cripples the revenue, they will be able to survive into the next year. And allows AAE to fund charities at the con and throuoght the yaear, donated "much more than $50,000"

"It does help our staff to know [that we have a cash reserve]" On a number of occasions the board and the con staff 

Paid registration attendance: 2061, as of last night
Artshow (rough): $54,000, $44
,500 before the art show auction
Largest piece did not go to auction, "Starfighter?"
One went $2,500. 
Been a good year, it has been over $50,000 before but there are no really large pieces this year

Conchair and vice-chair are hired.
Boarrd members have fiduciary responsibility. Board members have to hold the organization's interests over their own interests, they have various forms of insurance, well over a million dollars, . A million per incident, three million in total 
Mitra: "All of the responsibility, non of the glory".
Brent: There are some things we have to do and cannot talk about them.
Laura: "We can neither confirm nor deny
Mitra: We've never had to fire a con chair, we've sometimes had meetings and either did or

During the conventions they are required to step in if there is something going wrong. IF a conattendeee runs around juggling knives, I need to stop him." If I see the vice chair pull out a gun and waving it around, even if he's not serious, it's my job to stop him. " - There are lesser examples. If Peter: If there is something that is going to affect the long term state of the convention, we need to makee sure it is handled in some way, shape or form. "IN some cases we have to stick our nose in and directly interfere in some way or other". BRent: "I have had to interfere unoffiicially" "Board members often give their opinions, bu they don't mean jack unless we're actually holding our badge and saying 'I am a board member'"

296 at the end of the parade, others came in addition.

1688 room-nights in this hotel, the doubletree, another 160 in the overflow.

Every possible room that they can get for next year, aside from prexisting rooms . Normally they have a conservative room block, this time "We went all out" according to Laura.

Main page or RSS

Okay, I suspect with 30K subscribers to our EN Wikinews RSS feed, most of our readers find the new stories there, not our home page as many suggest. If we had a "selective" RSS feed, would that satisfy more readers? How many of you subscribe to our RSS? -- Zanimum 15:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

How many of you think its just one person posting up there? Bawolff ☺☻ 03:27, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

p.s. selective (DPL style) RSS would be wonderful and nice, but I don't think it would have prevented the current situation. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:27, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

"Laura Cherry noted that..."

Is this an original quote? I'd like to classify this article as an interview, for the sake of refreshing the "Recent interviews" section on the front page, which has content from November. -- Zanimum 16:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

The "notes" section above is largely a word-for-word copy of (some of) the statements of members of the board of AAE, Inc. at their annual meeting. I asked several questions of the board during the presentation, probably the majority - I did not consider the questions themselves worth noting, but some of the replies were. The bit from Peter Torkelson is a direct reply to a question I posed as a result of my prior investigation of the finances of Further Confusion - something like "I noticed you're making rather large amounts of money, could you explain what you intend to do with it?" I also remember asking for specific figures regarding the art show, paid attendance and hotel spaces. The quote from Laura developed from that, the rest of that paragraph is paraphrased from her reply.

As an aside, I had made the board aware of my WikiFur affiliation and they knew that their replies might be published, although I didn't mention Wikinews in particular as I had no prior status here. That was probably why they took the time to explain a bit more about the role of the board, although this wasn't included in the actual story as fiduciary responsibility is common to most boards. GreenReaper 17:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Opinions

Please post opinions about the content of this article on the opinions page. This page is reserved for work on the article, and should not be used as a forum for inflammatory commentary, however outraged you may be. --Shaggorama 17:53, 24 November 2007 (UTC)