Biggest Little FurCon Weekend - Part 1: The Convention.

I guess it's only fair to break my babble about this weekend now just wrapping up into somewhat discrete chunks of thought to keep the streams from getting crossed.  Basically, it all shakes down into two buckets that I wanna spend a little time writing about: Biggest Little FurCon and Motorcycling.

Best place to start is gonna be with Biggest Little FurCon itself.

In short, it was good.  Very good.  I could throw in the qualifier of for a first year convention but I won't.  It was simply good, regardless of how many years it has (or hasn't, as the case may be) been going.  The staff put together an interesting program around an interesting set of constraints and came up with some pretty interesting solutions.  All-in-all, pretty bad-ass.

The setup of their space was the most interesting solution to the absolute lack of social spaces for people to just chill out in.  Being a casino, there were some pretty heavy restrictions on where members of the convention could and couldn't be in costume/fursuit at the Grand Sierra Resort, most of those defined by state law more than policy of the hotel.  In fact, from what I observed, the Grand Sierra resort was extremely accommodating where they had leeway within the context of Nevada's law.  Essentially this all boiled down to one golden rule for Biggest Little FurCon: No Fursuits on the Casino Floor.  If you remembered nothing but that rule you'd be in good shape for the convention.

Map of BLFC's Space, From the BLFC site.

BLFC's space was basically entirely confined to all of the Nevada Exhibition center of the GSR.  Into that they packed a dealers room, a small art show, main stage, photo shoot area, and ample hang-out space in a fairly open-air format.  They had dedicated two break-out rooms for gaming, one break-out room for a fursuit lounge, and two additional rooms for panels/quiet space.  The space they set aside for registration/ConOps was quite large, almost obscenely so. ( They could have gotten away with 1/2 that space for those function and still been swimming in an ocean! )  The setup certainly did encourage socialization...until the dances started.

All-in-all I think the only significant complaint I have with Biggest Little FurCon is that they went to great length to make sure that there would be ample areas for people to socialize in only to have that destroyed every night by the dances.  When the lights went dim and the the music picked up everybody who's not really into the dances ( for the dancing or the music ) found themselves shit out of luck for open chill space.  This essentially pushed people who didn't want to dance off into private room parties because, lets face it, as a venue for socializing, casinos blow.


One interesting thing I noticed, BLFC's Patron level memberships way out-stripped the Sponsors.  No doubt because of the seriously cool swag that the Patrons got.  No really, the swag:price ratio for Patrons was a crazy good deal.

The Grand Sierra Resort itself was a great host to the convention.  I'd always thought of the venue as being a little skeezy when it was an MGM.  In the years since I went to college in Reno the place has changed significantly.  It's a substantially better property than I remember it having been.  The guest rooms are quite a bit larger than I was expecting, as well.  The double I'd booked was larger than any hotel room I've stayed at in the last I don't even know how long.  Massive!  The only really questionable thing about it was the bathroom door which looked as though somebody had tried to kick it in sometime recently.

Lots of things to do at the GSR as well, apart from gambling in the casion.  There are quite a few good food options at relatively good prices, bowling, second run movie theater, go-karts, mini-golf, an arcade...the list goes on.  Of course because there are a lot of things to do--and it's a pretty big hotel/casino--it's also extremely busy on the weekend.  At least it was extremely busy this weekend.  The number of people staying at the hotel really started to swell on Friday night.  It's so weird going to a furry convention at a venue where the convention isn't the biggest event going on.

I'll certainly be going to BLFC next year.  Hope they can add a bit more programming and figure out a way to keep the social spaces accessible to everybody next year.