Its obvious how much time has passed since we have posted to you, oh website. Lockdown 2020 happened, and I told you what was happening. A short time later Stego had to make that call to OC Parks related to our annual event (which had to be canceled). Even then we had a feeling that what was happening then, was not going to go away anytime soon. Im sure many people noticed that there hasn’t been any new things to update you guys with (beyond us tweeting and retweeting some small things from our Twitter acct)

Once our calendar was taken down, I (Kat) tried to think about what we might do in the meantime. We knew some of our community had gone deeper into social media, and taking things online (using services like Twitter and Discord to notify people of a live stream, online art jams, and the like). Virtual events are definitely an option, which brought thoughts back to a “locals directory”, an idea I had before and had since shelved. However, it seemed that, when I entertained the idea to others (Local community, mid 2020), I just got a lot of silence back. With everyone’s social bandwidth so low, and the massive effect on others’ mental health, I definitely did not want to push further.

So, I just kept watch on some things within the furry community. I took mental notes as we began to learn more and more about the virus and its transmission. While we stood fast against the compulsion to let fear run our lives, there was no time I felt comfortable bringing the calendar back. As it was, I had seen some dangers in one or two of the local organizers, who seemed to still want to run events, when there was still no vaccine available (and one of those two events was being held indoors with no change to capacity limits). We noted this (and who these people were), but were pleased to see that a decent chunk of SoCal fandom locals were being careful.

I would think back on things and wonder “What can we do with our site that makes sense in the now? Is now an okay time to try and posting events again?” Honestly, I still would like some input from people on this, especially as I watch how things work in the aftermath of a convention weekend and people posting their COVID test results. With the pandemic, things can change and I want to do things with as much room to change with any new factors related to mitigating transmission. I have been writing down some ideas on how we can tailor our events calendar and provide some degree of safety considerations for people to think about as they get back out there. Would anyone be interested in helping out with our website with what we could plan?

I’m still going through some of the technical aspects to our site. SoCalFurs.com currently uses WordPress, and will be using the Modern Events Calendar plugin for posting events. I have been playing with labeling and tagging functions over on my test server (see this progress thread). .There is potential to (still) do something with this website, and I know it. If you share this sentiment (maybe you were one of the people who answered our poll), please reach out via our contact page. My overall schedule and work-fun balance is not as consistent as it once was but, Im usually around and hang out in the SoCal Furs’ Telegram chat. Id love to (finally) bring more people into the circle and make a good effort on this.