Othercon is the first ever annual 3-day virtual convention for members of the Otherkin, Therian, and general Alterhuman/Nonhuman community.
The purpose of this convention is to provide a space where people within (and outside) of the community can come together to socialize, educate, and entertain for a fun-filled weekend!
But to summarize: The new website is up! Artist, panelist, and staff applications are open right now and can be found here. Those forms auto-close on June 30th at 11:59pm (US East). This year's mascot vote is also open, and can be found on the same page. The mascot vote only lasts a week, so get your votes in!
The email newsletter is also being retired in favor of RSS, with more details available on the news page.
Making the post here since it uses a link to my Ko-fi and that feels strange putting on the official blog, but it's been decided that the Othercon website will be moving to Nekoweb from its previous host, which would cut our yearly costs almost in half.
The funding goal is $52 USD. Because the funding goal is so low, I'm using my Ko-fi this time instead of GoFundMe. It felt odd making an entire campaign this time compared to what GFM is usually used for, so I opted for this. Once the goal is met, I'll be able to pay the subscriptions and get the site up and running and migrate the domain over.
The goal progress will go uo through regular "buy me a coffee!" donations or buying something from my shop, although be aware that if you buy a physical item then part of the price involves getting the item made and shipped.
Want to support my work? Consider buying me a coffee!
Making the post here since it uses a link to my Ko-fi and that feels strange putting on the official blog, but it's been decided that the Othercon website will be moving to Nekoweb from its previous host, which would cut our yearly costs almost in half.
The funding goal is $52 USD. Because the funding goal is so low, I'm using my Ko-fi this time instead of GoFundMe. It felt odd making an entire campaign this time compared to what GFM is usually used for, so I opted for this. Once the goal is met, I'll be able to pay the subscriptions and get the site up and running and migrate the domain over.
The goal progress will go uo through regular "buy me a coffee!" donations or buying something from my shop, although be aware that if you buy a physical item then part of the price involves getting the item made and shipped.
Want to support my work? Consider buying me a coffee!
Some might've noticed that the GoFundMe has yet to go up this year, and that's because it's currently unknown if we want to continue with our current host or downsize to a cheaper alternative like nekoweb. Currently our hosting is about $80(?84?) USD for a year, and asking for that much money for a website that only updates about once a year feels like a lot. We've been sunsetting the account system for a year or two now, and with the Discord update coming this year we're also sunsetting age verification, so a server to support those is no longer necessary. Email can be moved to a different provider like Gmail or Proton.
All of this information is currently not final, so it's not confirmed if a hosting change will happen or not, but it is likely and would greatly reduce our yearly costs. The current website has been backed up to prevent data loss during the billing grace period.
We get suggestions yearly along the lines of "you should have [XYZ] panels next year", so I'm sending out a reminder that we are the wrong people to request for these!
Panels are user-submitted, so the best place to increase panel variety is to have discussions with fellow community members! Whether you want to organize an activity, or want to see more of a different subject that was missing from the current year, we encourage voicing what you want to see in community spaces and preparing for future years.
Special thanks to everyone who attended, and to all of our volunteers. It was an amazing weekend! The server's member count peaked at 667 members, and we managed to raise $1085 USD for charity!
Will panels be recorded and posted to the youtube this year as well? I always look forward to them since I'm unable to attend the con itself due to scheduling conflicts
Hi! I was wondering about the schedule site. I would like to use the site to make an agenda for the panels I want to attend, but I need a ticket ID or relevant email. With how registration works, how would I acquire that?
Since we don't use the tickets feature for the event (at least not this year), there isn't really a way to do so.
Othercon is the first ever annual 3-day virtual convention for members of the Otherkin, Therian, and general Alterhuman/Nonhuman community.
Othercon's schedule for 2025 is now available! By default the times are shown in the US Eastern timezone, but can be changed near the top where it says "Date and time is shown in (UTC -05:00) America/New_York".
Was wondering if there are any 18+ panels planned for this year and how these will be handled with Discord's new age verification policies slapped on UK users. Some people like myself I believe have been verified as 18+ with Othercon but not with discord as a whole, and are uncomfortable giving our ID to third party companies for the verification. Maybe just making it an access role rather than actually age restricting channels? It's possible this is a non issue but I thought I'd shoot an ask for clarification at least
We do have some 18+ panels on the schedule this year! Unfortunately though, there's not much on our end that we can do about this that isn't risky for the server. If we're hosting adult content then in order to be compliant with Discord we have to mark those channels as age-restricted.
I've heard that using a VPN can potentially help, but I don't live in the UK, so I can't reliably test this.
When will registrations be opened on the site? It's barely over a week until the 8th and the registration link for attendees on your website still goes to 2024's registration.
It's available on the website starting today, sorry for the wait!
Attendee registration opens (a little differently)!
Our official website has been updated (othercon.org), you can now queue up for this year's server! All you have to do is click "join server" near the bottom of the homepage and it will start pending.
Server Mascot
The results are in, and our server mascot for this year is the cave dragon: The Olm!
Theme and charity news
Unlike the banner says, it is no longer our 5th anniversary (it hasn't been updated yet). Instead, this year's theme centers around wildlife conservation and protecting endangered species! Here are our chosen charities for this year:
Wildlife Conservation Network
"WCN is helping conservationists protect endangered wildlife across every continent. Our 100% model ensures that any donation designated for a specific species goes directly to the conservationists protecting that species, with zero overhead taken out."
Association of Zoos and Aquariums
"AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums are leaders in the protection of threatened and endangered species. Through AZA SAFE: Saving Animals from Extinction, the entire AZA-accredited zoo and aquarium community is focusing our conservation science, wildlife expertise, and outreach to millions of annual visitors on saving species in the wild."
More information on how we handle donations can be found on our website under the "charities" page.
Looks like 2025 had two winners, but there can only be one!
The 2025 mascot vote had long ended, but it ended with a tie! This poll won't be open for long (a day or two at most), so make sure to get your final vote in!
With some delay, staff applications for Othercon 2025 are now open!
Link to form: https://forms.gle/15fePkVhYK3mymgm8
Important Notice about non-US timezones:
We've noticed that Othercon is known as a primarily US-based con, which seems to be discouraging those from other parts of the world from taking part.
This was never intended to be the case!
We've wanted to have panels from different timezones to give more participants things to see, but have had a very hard time getting staff members and panelists from outside of the US because of this assumption. We highly encourage those from other countries to participate!
Links to the other applications can be found here: https://www.tumblr.com/otherconvention/778914281888595968/othercon-2025-artist-and-panelist-submission?source=share
We've been behind on a lot of things so far this year, and that includes sending out much needed reminders through our different update channels (tumblr, bluesky, newsletter). This led to some not knowing when things closed, or even that forms were open in the first place. We apologize for this, and to try and make up for it, all forms will be open until the end of June.
