Confurence.com was the web presence of the first annual convention and seminar dedicated to the Furry community. It was registered 22 years ago as of this year — before many furries were even born! I was never able to figure out HTML and such, so the pages were created and maintained by a variety of volunteers over the years, leaving it in a state of perpetual construction. When I retired from directing the convention in 1999, we retained the site with a hope to revive it in the future.
Well, the Future is Now!
Furry fandom was born a few years before the Internet came into its own, and much like Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Comic fandoms, fans kept in touch with each other via letters and home-made publications like Amateur Press Associations (APAs) and Zines (self-published magazines). Events such as conventions were announced in flyers distributed at comic and book stores and other conventions. They were advertized in fan publications, newsletters (con reports), sometimes in mainstream comics, and through mailings (snail-mail). Professional and amateur cartoonists, illustrators, writers, world-builders, and gamers created content that became the chronicle of their particular fandoms. Conventions published souvenir books with program information, guest bios, staff and membership lists, art, and stories.
In 1977, the first Japanese animation fan group in North America, The Cartoon/Fantasy Organization (C/FO), was formed in Los Angeles. (Actually it was an animation fan group that ended up with a large library of video tapes of Japanese animated TV shows and movies.) The group soon expanded across the US, with other fan groups joining. (Fans of Japanese giant monsters, “Kaiju”, had already formed their own groups.) Chapters in the Chicago area, the San Francisco area, Texas, Florida, and New York shared the available video content. The fans wrote articles about their favorite shows and films, fan fiction, studio and creator bios, translations, and also made original comics; all published in club newsletters and zines. Many of these creative fans were proto-furries, and as our own fandom sprouted in room parties at fan conventions in the 1980s, furry publications, flyers, APAs, and Zines all appeared to help spread the word. When we started our own conventions, con flyers, newsletters, and souvenir books were published. So much of the history of fandoms, including our own, are chronicled in these publications, which sadly exist only in private collections of fans who “were there” when it all happened…
…until now.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of our furry family, particularly Changa Lion, the ConFurence web site is reborn!
Welcome to the ConFurence Archive!
Sylys Sable
Questions or problems contact us here: