2012 Feedback

[LevLion]

Regarding the projection screens. I can only apologise to all our guests who suffered to see.
Unfortuantly someone damaged the cables during the pawpet show that connected the camera up and as a result the feed kept dropping. It diddnt effect any of the video of PC outputs just the camera feed which of course was the issue for some. Next year we already have planned a better distro for the video.

As for the positionning of the camera well yes we were only asked to provide a stage camera so it was really in the wrong place for this event, however as someone has suggested I think the judges should be in a front row facing the stage next time this would mean the dancers are facing the crowd and the cameras can catch them.

Although Im not incharge of events I think the reason the dance workshop was elsewhere was because the stage room was in use with another event at the time and there dance floor is designed to only fit in there. We might look to get it all under one location next year.

[Lazerus101]

Thanks Lev, I guessed that it must have been some technical issue that you were just unable to rectify right away. As I say, mostly minor gripes and I know you guys take every opportunity to improve things year on year.

[Gandalf-The-Blue]

Okay, where to start....

First of all, FANTASTIC, FANTASTIC, PAWSOME, FURRIFFIC, GRRRRREAT convention!

Thanks to everyone for pulling that off. You switched locations just in time, I think one more year in that run-down shack that the Britannia was would've led to some people not returning. The new venue seems fantastic, the staff were nice and even when there were problems, very cooperative. The events I saw were great, I really enjoyed the pawpet show, the dances and the dance comp.

Now for the not so good things:

Free stickers after the Pawpet show:

Great idea gone terribly wrong. Doing this right at the exit led to two of the aisles being completely blocked, even for those who didn't even want a sticker. I had to wait roughly 15 minutes just to leave the room with no way of sneaking past the queue, it was too crammed - 15 minutes I didn't have at that time.

You may want to do that somewhere else in the future, at a place where people can gather and wait without blocking the exits. Consider the security risks, too.



Dances:

All in all I'm happy with the dances, but there was one thing that really ticked me off: You do not mess with the EQ settings while music is playing. PERIOD.

During my set, someone behind the main audio desk thought it was funny to repeatedly crank the bass up to the point where the music faded into an apocalyptic, distorted bass. No, it was NOT funny. It left me confused as to what was going on, what I should do, constantly re-tweak my EQs (which normally is not neccessary) and left the audience annoyed since it killed the mood and reduced the audio to a noise that obviously was painful to some.

Just don't do that.


That's pretty much all I have to say. I could comment on the video feeds on stage, but I already spoke to the people in charge, so that does not need to be repeated anymore.

[Gandalf-The-Blue]

...you had at least 5 official cameras recording it, yet on the projectors you showed input from the cameras that also filmed the dancers' back....

Neither Mikepaws nor I am a part of CFz staff at this point, and our cameras were not official CF cameras. We're just filming for our own little projects.

I'm not going to argue this  here (I wanted to do that at EF forums, but EF staff simply placed their arguments and locked the topic like very mature people.

Well, thanks for dragging it out for more than a year. Now think again why nobody wanted to discuss things with you.

I hope that unlike EF, this will be on video/dvd one day.

EF 17 PPS has been released by Suran just 2 weeks after the con.

[Bigwig]

Yes you shall not try to make videos with 100 pound automatic-mode digicam in movie mode - guilty. However the result from the dance-contest suffered additionally from the glaring white tablecloth on the judge's desk in the center of the image which did not allow the cam to raise contrast for darker suits. I learned from Colifox that the hotel personal was not allowed to take tipps. That was certainly not nice for them having to reject it everytime (and left me with the odd feeling my money or acknowledging of their great work/service had no value to them). Near the end of Wing C ground level the wifi-distribution-network was unstable or even temporarily unusable (3/4 packet-loss - however after finding a walk to the rotunda would fix that I did just that. case solved.)

I loved the carpet at the dance floor. Especially with fog in the air usually I fight a lot with slippery ground in suit which was no subject here. Having huge suiter feet however it did not cost me much extra energy  and I loved the speed controlled big fan - fair compromise of air vs. noise. Begging every now and then with gestures for more air was always honored. The union jack in front of the fan looking wonderfull however cost quite some airflow. The Pawpet show had those minutes where you swallow deeply moved. Losing a dear beloved bunny...

Well and even if it may sounds silly but towards the end of the con with the certainty to have some money left I would have loved to spend a bit for charity but I never saw a box to put a note in (with paypal link I would still be willing to fix this). The Auction was too long especially running in parallel to the dances. When people leave due to that potential buyers leave as well.

Overall this was a wonderfull convention leaving not too much way for improvements. However the hotel was booked out and all other places are quite remote, which reminds me from lessons learned from EF. The only thing which could likely stop me (especially as a fursuiter) attending next year is loosing fight in a registration rush. Or noticing registration too late. A notification to CF2012 attendees by emails would be very much appreciated.

PS: the dance music - especially that of the dead dog dance was awesome.

[Kivuli]

Yay feedback time!

First off would like to say it was an amazing time, loved it all but sadly it was never perfect and there were a few things I would like to give my opinion on

Thursday - The food issue. The Hotel staff apparently didn't know or didnt have the menu for the weekend till later on. It was sorted but the delay was a little annoying

Poor Ralicat - Me and my fiancee were in Furry Philosophy and Rali had to run out part way through as he was meant to help run and organise 4 events. It gave a bump in the pace to that specific event

Buffet - The sponsor buffet felt a little.... underwhelming the selection of food was not that great, alot of the sandwiches on offer had stuff like mustard and pickle inside. Personally I dont like that so my options were limited, but compared to last year it felt a little let down. Just a suggestion for next time maybe have a private sponsor BBQ where you get an exclusive ticket in your pack at registration. If a sponsor doesnt want to go he/she can give his ticket to someone else but the ticket MUST be shown before getting the tasty nom treats,. Just a suggestion

Art collection - Was insane TBH there was only 1 till running? what happened to the 2 or 3 in previous years? it really slowed down processing time. Not much else to say just hope it gets sorted next year

Art Auction - ban 1 pound bids its annoying. also its unfair that art going into the charity auction has no percent going to charity.... if your not going to give anything personally I dont think it deserves to make the auction regardless of how nice the art is

Disco - this is just a personal issue. I have asthma, and on most nights I couldnt get near the floor due to the thick cloud of smoke produced by the machine. Im  not going to ask that we no longer have it thats not fair but maybe better ventilation?

Monday - The food after about 12... the prices went up and the quality went waaaaaaay down. my burger dried my mouth out and my fiancee hot dog... the bun was split adn the sausages were limp and hardly any cheese or chips were on the plate. I understand that we dont exclusively have the hotel after that time, but people were being told 'yes the promotional food was still on by the staff of the hotel. we could just manage to get one meal from the hotel that day and eat some of the food we had with us later. my friend had to cut a meal of the day out simply cause he hadnt the money any more. A simple suggestion for con and hotel staff :- keep the cheap and good quality meals and drinks all the way till the end of monday and the only way to get served it, is to show your con badge that way no randomers can get the deals but we still benifit. after spending money at a con alot of people wont have the cash to buy the more pricey meals

ok thats done rant over. sorry if i have offended anyone this is my opinion and my suggestions for next time

[Cosmo]

Art collection - Was insane TBH there was only 1 till running? what happened to the 2 or 3 in previous years? it really slowed down processing time. Not much else to say just hope it gets sorted next year

We've always only had the one till as, for most of the con, a second one has been hard to justify. I am going to be looking at getting a second, but it depends on getting enough people to register so we can afford it (hint, hint)

Art Auction - ban 1 pound bids its annoying. also its unfair that art going into the charity auction has no percent going to charity.... if your not going to give anything personally I dont think it deserves to make the auction regardless of how nice the art is

Again, I'll be looking at both of these issues. We didn't actually get that much higher a percentage of items being submitted to the art show with 0%, it was just that there were more items in general and more of the 0% items got through to the live auction than normal creating a perception that a lot of submissions had nothing for charity. Both of these issues played a part in slowing the live auction down significantly, so I'll be looking to find a way of solving them that's fair to everyone, including the artists.

[Nimbus Wolf]

TL;DR: My first ConFuzzled will most definitely not be my last. Brilliant convention!

Great stuff:
-Free breakfast, with pretty good food and plenty of espresso machines!
-The god-fan that was by the outside door of the dance. Could we have that thing running even when the dances aren't? (preferably outside at nighttime! Inside a meat locker if it's raining)
-Shuttle bus was an excellent idea. The driver found us confusing, but was happy nonetheless.
-Hotel staff was very friendly and positive whenever I spoke to them.
-The hotel's layout was great. The star pattern meant you never had to walk far to get anywhere, and I didn't once need to use an elevator, even when suiting!
-The stands offering food and drinks at seemingly the perfect time and place.
-The fact that said food and drink was decently priced (although drink prices and food amounts seemed to vary quite a bit, as Skie mentioned. I paid £4.50 or £3 for the same bottle of Crabby's, depending on moon phase)
-Something about the atmosphere of the convention made it so easy to socialize. More so than any other con I've been to.
-Dealers' den was excellently sized: no line to get in, piece of cake to walk through, but still *looked* packed and active every time I was in it.

Suggestions:
-More charity at the auction is always a good thing, but artists need to eat too. How about having some sort of "reserve" system to complement the percentage system, where the submitter can say "everything above X number of pounds goes to charity". It could be a secret if the reserve isn't met, if the submitter so wished. Also, artists: don't be afraid to change the charity percent if the bids go higher! If someone's on the fence about a piece, it can be just the right motivation for them to up their bid. You'll probably get more money, anyway: Tani increasing the charity percent on her husky piece from 5% to 10% was enough to push the top bid another 100 pounds, and a bit of math will show you that she actually gained 35 pounds because of it.
-Only a minor niggle, but could we get a discount on the cold sandwiches next time? I had to leave at 6AM on Monday to catch my flight, making it too early for breakfast but too late for the "quick bites", so the only option was a £7-10 sandwich from the front desk. I don't expect hot food at that time of day (not enough people awake to justify keeping the kitchen going), but that kinda money for cold cuts on plain sliced bread left a bad taste in my mouth from a hotel that, for the entire rest of the con, had provided an excellent experience.

Comments:
-What's wrong with having long queues? It's a British Furry convention, after all!
-Was the sponsor comic meant to be picked up at the Dealers' den? I was having so much fun at the con that I didn't notice its absence until now. >_>

[Vector]

I didn't attend this year. But I have questions about 2013 events.

Can we expect to see these events back in 2013 ?

- Furrylimpics

- Cavalcade of Cack

- Fursuit performance workshop(s).

Free for all (fursuit fiasco) is fun but nothing can replace the Furrylimpics with teams on stage. Cavalcade of Cack is one of the best puppet shows I ever saw, I really HOPE that it'll be back next year ! And finally a fursuit performance workshop (maybe one for beginners & another for advanced performers) is a mandatory in convention with 50/60 % of fursuiters attending.

I see you managed to get a free shuttle this year. Could it be possible that the shuttle would be also in service for the people attending the day before the convention ?

Can't wait for 2013 !

[Fairlight]

Free stickers after the Pawpet show:

Great idea gone terribly wrong. Doing this right at the exit led to two of the aisles being completely blocked, even for those who didn't even want a sticker. I had to wait roughly 15 minutes just to leave the room with no way of sneaking past the queue, it was too crammed - 15 minutes I didn't have at that time.

You may want to do that somewhere else in the future, at a place where people can gather and wait without blocking the exits. Consider the security risks, too.

Apologies for that. It was a very last minute decision.. The doors on the side of the room were actually not locked, so could have been used to escape, but we failed to see the issue as such, so didn't let people know about the alternative escape routes Sawwry...

[Swolf]

Dances:

All in all I'm happy with the dances, but there was one thing that really ticked me off: You do not mess with the EQ settings while music is playing. PERIOD.

During my set, someone behind the main audio desk thought it was funny to repeatedly crank the bass up to the point where the music faded into an apocalyptic, distorted bass. No, it was NOT funny. It left me confused as to what was going on, what I should do, constantly re-tweak my EQs (which normally is not neccessary) and left the audience annoyed since it killed the mood and reduced the audio to a noise that obviously was painful to some.

Just don't do that.

Hi BBF,
I will see that the audio crew in charge doesn't do this in future, the only reason the volume was adjusted now and again (as in overall db volume) was to counteract the noise of the industrial cooling fan system in place, this generally was kept to "build ups" in the music so that the suiters / dancers didn't swelter in the heat, all 3 aircon units in the room were running full tilt as well but due to the high number of people in a small space and the uncharacteristic warm weather (for Britain ha the temperature was still fairly high.

I'm sorry to say I didn't witness this as I was unfortunately unwell during the later parts of your set so had to retire early so I apologise for this.
Thanks for the feedback
Swolf

[Swolf]

Disco - this is just a personal issue. I have asthma, and on most nights I couldnt get near the floor due to the thick cloud of smoke produced by the machine. Im  not going to ask that we no longer have it thats not fair but maybe better ventilation?

Hi Kivuli,
Thanks for the feedback, we did increase the ventilation in the room and found that most of the smoke was evacuated fairly quickly during the 1st couple of nights, there were two large industrial fans on either side of the room to circulate the warm air out through the fire escape.
The smoke used shoudn't cause any breathing issues but as all people react differently to the fluid we did place warnings over the use of smoke just in case and a medic was on hand also.

In regards to the smoke itself is of the finer type so it looks to linger in the air a little more than the thicker stuff so its a case of it looks worse than it is.
I hope that next year there is more of a breeze and not so "still" humid air which should help keep the air flowing through.
Kind Regards
Swolf

[Swolf]

Dance event fail: So you got those dancing panels for the dance competition. Cool. But why weren't they on the dance floor too? Was it a logistic issue? Carpet is really not a good dancing surface.
I like the intimate room we had for the dances, but can't say I'm surprised when I think the dances at CFz 2008 were more crowded than this.

Hi Skie
Thanks for the Feedback, I think both Lev and Shay have covered the issues over the dance comp sufficiently, in regards to the dance flooring this is the hotels and we did have the option of using it, however the issue with a glossy dance floor is that if there is drink spillages or excess moisture this can cause the flooring to become unsafe. We've had feedback from another attendee who's fursuiting was helped by not having a glossy floor. So at this stage we will consider both views for next year.
Overall the dances were well attended and based on the door count numbers I suspect the numbers were similar if not more than the earlier YHA dances.
Kind Regards
Swolf

[gargath]

Hi,

First of all I'd like to say that Confuzzled this year was amazing. Staff did an impressive job at getting everything to work out as well as it did.
The venue was great and the people there really pulled out all the stops to make it an awesome Con.

The one gripe I had was with the auction (again).
It was long and there was no way of coming back for an item. Maybe number them next time?

Also, I think with this many items on auction, you could afford banning "0% to charity". Many items only fetched the prices they did because of the auction. They would not have sold for that much in the dealers' den. I don't think it's the job of con staff to help sell individual artists' work.
The reason that there's an auction at all is because this way more money can be made for the charity than from just selling their merchandise. I think it would be great to return to those roots and have at least some mandatory contribution of someone wants an item to go up for auction.

[James The Dog]

I personally think maybe there should be a minimum 20% to charity for items in the auction myself- It is a charity auction after all. I haven't spoken to a single person who didn't find the amount of 0% items suprising, and even 5 and 10% feels like no more than a token genture.