Crystal Fair Con: Day 1: 72 hours remain · 5:56pm Jul 10th, 2014
So I woke up bright and early Friday morning for the ride of my life. And by "bright and early" I mean I was horribly late as I went around and around looking for the elusive single affordable (i.e. free) parking spot in the ghetto of Helsinki known as itäkeskus before hoofing it to the venue.
On the way, however, I had a magical, mystical, life-changing meeting with a unicorn:
Yes, that's right, I spotted a google maps car.
Feeling truly blessed, I was in high spirits as I traveled to Finlandiatalo, where I was greeted by an utterly packed—
...Er, I mean, an utterly packed—
—venue. On a Friday. Inorite. Honestly, all joking aside, Friday was busy, real busy! There were a lot of three-day passes sold, but a huge number of people bought even more tickets at the door. Fantastic!
The doors opened promptly at 10:00am and an enthusiastic staff were just raring to greet everyone.
I'm kidding! I'm kidding! That's Aveline, another of the guest managers. She was looking after the amazing Daniel Ingram who got in pretty late on Thursday. His flight went well, but there's not much nice that you can say about a 14-hour-ish flight, is there? Still, he was really awesome, and so was Anneli Heed who was finally reunited with her luggage on the Friday, yay!
You can imagine the face I made. Actually you don't have to imagine, I'll show you:
(Actually that's not my face. OR IS IT!!????!!!111)
Anyway, the first order of the day (and the first test of my leet skills of organizing a pony everypony should know) was to make sure she and all the other GoH's were there for the opening ceremony.
The lights went down, the curtains went up and the three of them went on stage. On time. Woohoo!
Friday went really well, all said and done. It had its moments, but they were remarkably few and far between. I got familiar with the radio (which died on me once, yay for suddenly realizing you're half deaf when it comes to con matters! Nevermind, it was an easy fix - just needed a new radio!) and got used to making our guests feel welcome so they could make our attendees glad they attended.
Man, I thought Friday was long, but then came Saturday... and on Saturday, this happened:
As a special treat, here's laserpon3's super-hush-hush, never-before-heard next project.Keep it under your hats, folks! Shhhhh!
Honest. Totally legit.
Just a tip: You should've gone to Herttoniemi. Ample parking space underneath the supermarket every time I've been there. Also, they're free!
Anyhow, everything went superbly, and I'm sure you did valiantly in keeping things up and running using your astonishingly awesome Sword of Astonishingly Awesome to ward off the hordes of interdimensional spirits threatening to unleash the worst kind of heck upon us all! Wait, that happened, right? Oh, no. That happened that time when I spilled fuel on my gloves one winter and kept them on as I drove home. Then I discovered that my car thinks jumping spiders are cute.
Anyhow, fun times were had at the con, and I look forward to the next time!
. I take it that you do as well? Or not? 
You kind of strike me as the kind of person who thinks everything will explode in your face when making a broth, then when it boils a bit too violently you confidently say "This looks absolutely perfect" when it means "It's ruined beyond salvation", and once it's been served and everyone loved it, you review the entire cooking process like it were always on the verge of disaster. But that's me, interpreting English humor and applying it to you, and do I know you that well anyhow? Maybe I don't. I'm just some random nobody who got hit by a bus when he was 13, so... 
yeah, I'm gonna stop here.
2272093
Well without trying to upset the rest of the staff, because (and I really want to stress this) the con itself went off largely without the smidgeonist of hitches, we did spend a lot of time putting out the sorts of small fires* you have when you've got thousands** of people in one place all at the same time.
I know we dropped the ball a few times, and there's room for improvement... but when's that not the case? This was my first con, my first pony con, my first working con and even my first three autographs, so without hubris I say we did pretty bloody great.
Yep, I want to do it again! Riding the ragged edge of disaster from sun-up to sun-down was utterly amazing.
* there were no real fires. Metaphor, dear ponies!
** I don't have the actual count, but the queue on Saturday went out, around, up the steps and down the main road