Antheria supposedly sabotaged

[Jim Demintia]

Not sure that this advances the thread any, but a twitter user seems to think their name invokes some kind of old disease.

[ProvincialTwit]

Either subconscious or simply unvoiced was probably "If we leave them with less to do they're more likely to do the things we want the most people at, like going to 2's shows."

So exactly how prominent is/was he in the programming offered?

Seconding this question.  I find it difficult to believe he has enough material to even do more than one show per con.

[AshleyAshes]

Furthermore, I have been the victim of theft from my dealer's table before. They say that the convention staff has the ability to lock the door IF NECESSARY

In my experience running anime cons, theft from the dealers tables is an accepted reality.  I know guys that own multiple retail locations who still lose a few things at cons just due to the shit store of people distracting them.  Obviously they pay as much attention as they can but at a 14 000 person anime con, you can't spot every would be theif.  So this is hardly remarkable.

However locking of the dealers room is a freakin' requirement.  Basically something the con guarintees to dealers who can have hundreds of thousands of dollars of merch set up that took 6hrs to set up and could never be taken down each night.  They arn't even expected to do so, they are promised a locked and watched dealers room where their goods are safe.  So yeah 'locked if necessary' is a pretty lame statement as it should be a promise.

[Jim Demintia]

If nothing else, this whole episode does indicate the mistake of underestimating the power dealers have over your new pet convention. They are the ones who really are making a bet on you, and as we see here, they are the ones who will create problems for you if you don't treat them right.

I am reminded of something I heard from a teacher a while back about why Adobe Flash had the reputation it did. The product was originally built for and still runs fairly flawlessly on Windows, which is something like 90-plus percent of it's user base. But a large portion of web developers and developers in general (who make up only a tiny portion of the general Internet population) use Mac or Unix, where the quality of Flash is, to be generous, sub-par. That is largely what has led to the anti-Flash sentiment and the attempts to standardize it out of existence with HTML5.

Just because you please the majority doesn't mean you are doing it right.

[AshleyAshes]

I honestly have the feeling that local dealers will make little money and traveling dealers will lose their shirts at this con after they factor in costs of transportation and lodging.  If anything is most important to the furry fandom, it's art and it's artists, so if you financially screw a lot of artists you'll have serious PR issues with the fandom as a whole soon after.  Furries afterall, are crazy loyal to their artists, even when artists themselves do aweful things there will be no shortage of fans to rush in and defend them.  Ligitimately screw a bunch of them?  Man you are in trouble.

[Jim Demintia]

It kind of looks like Antheria tried to ensure their success mostly by fame-whoring, i.e. inviting and/or paying the way of popular furries (2 has already been mentioned, Bucktown Tiger was another one who was there) and thus buying themselves the attendance of their fanboys and/or the insulation that comes with these folks defending their fuckups and thus their fanboys blindly defending them as well.

On 2 Gryphon's Twitter, recent postings indicate he seems a little butthurt over the #anafailia hashtag. He mentions a minor in attendance and that thread goes back to this posting which says

@2_gryphon  As much as most of it just seems to be whining, I must agree with concerns of a certain person's attire, or rather lack thereof.

That post is in reply to 2's original butthurt posting about the #anafailia tag, so no more context is offered.

It's also worth noting that Bucktown Tiger drove 5,500 miles across the U.S. from his home in the Southeast, something I kind of doubt he would have done if he wasn't being compensated.

[AshleyAshes]

On 2 Gryphon's Twitter, recent postings indicate he seems a little butthurt over the #anafailia hashtag. He mentions a minor in attendance and that thread goes back to this posting which says

@2_gryphon  As much as most of it just seems to be whining, I must agree with concerns of a certain person's attire, or rather lack thereof.

That post is in reply to 2's original butthurt posting about the #anafailia tag, so no more context is offered.

It seems to refer to this, that a guest of honor was wearing, though I can't identify which GOH it is.

[a pigeon]

Antheria News Letter for Friday
...
We hit a registration snag which was fixed by our emergency programmer -- a poor tiger named Tallyhawk who literally spent 12 hours solid in front of his laptop programming a new reg system from scratch. It was a little late, but we got the system up and running. We apologize for the delay on that.
...
Though we would have liked to use the ballroom through Saturday afternoon, another even had already been booked by another party.
...
As an alternative, we will be holding a beach party!

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1756668/

Antheria News Letter for Saturday
...
we began to spot lightning near the beach (four days of rain in California per year, it picked our beach party). So we canceled our official events on the beach for safety concerns.
...
Unfortunately, since the main ballroom was being used by another party until that evening, we had no way of offering our members anything else to do!

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1758887/

[Kindrift]

So exactly how prominent is/was he in the programming offered?

Seconding this question.  I find it difficult to believe he has enough material to even do more than one show per con.

This is as updated as their site's going to get, I presume:

Antheria will have a broad range of events that offer some of the best in entertainment.

Here are a few examples of some of the great events coming soon:
"Matt Ebel, Live in Concert with Bucktown Tiger"
Uncle Kage's Story Hour
2, The Ranting Gryphon, Live
Dances With Live DJs
Special Charity Performance From Uncle Kage and 2, The Ranting Gryphon
... and much, much, more.


There's lot's more coming. We'll post the final schedule in a few weeks.

And Twitter states there was some 'Furry Night Live' gathering.  So... half of it was either 2 or Kage, the other half being dances that may have been canceled, and then Bucktown Tiger, the most embarassing thing to ever call itself rap.  And there are apologies that scheduling conflicts left blocks where people had nothing to do.  How beautiful.  This is not to imply that furry conventions are ever, ever worthwhile for the official events, though.  The room parties and private gatherings make any convention, but the official programming does show a certain complete lack of professionalism and planning on their parts.

Regarding Twitter, it's largely a wall of complaints, mixed with "well it's only the first year!" and notes on who saw who.  If they can put their massive egos behind them, they have a chance of getting their shit together next year.