Re: limits

["James Purchase" <jpurch@interlog.com>]

Ken wrote:
"If we rely on sending PDF certificates to the winners, we are circumventing
one of Karen's requests - to reach out to all AGA members, even ones without
computers. I think we should, at least, snail mail certificates to the
winners."

James responds:
I was aware of that when I made the suggestion. Its not how I would like to
do things, but the idea had to be presented and considered. I don't "like"
the idea of not giving out awards/prizes but if we have no budget or can't
decide on a budget, we have no other choice. I just wanted people to think
about the other extreme.

Ken also wrote:
"Right now, we have numerous volunteers to scan photos, so I don't think we
are going to run into staffing problems when it comes to processing photos.
If we do, we can always solicit the APD and local aquarium societies for
help - some of them have elaborate websites and would probably be glad to
help out if needed. Please remember that our little "steering committee" was
thrown together in a hurry from just a few posts on the APD. If we get a
great deal more entries than we anticipate (doubtful), I am sure there are
many people out there who would love to get involved in the latter stages of
this event (as compared to the early stages where there has been a lot of
mud wrestling going on)."

James responds:
Mud wrestling aside, don't count on scads of volunteers coming out of the
woodwork. There is absolutely NO WAY we can count on that, nor would any
proposal which counted on such help get much support from me (or probably
from the AGA MC). We have to be careful to not bite off more than we can
chew here. If we are able to successfully pull this off ONCE, the volunteers
will probably be more numerous next year. But whatever we go with, the
people here RIGHT NOW are the only ones we can count on.

As for the "scanning help", please see my earlier post - I don't know how
practical it is going to be to count on sending packages of prints and
slides around the country to different people for scanning - do they know of
a more secure (and cheaper) route than the U.S. Postal Service? How do we
budget for the cost of such shipping? Karen has said that we have to know up
front what postage costs are going to be - the AGA is not interested in
costs added after the fact. What would happen if a whole packet of
prints/slides got lost in the mail? Who is going to contact all of the folks
who's images got lost and ask for duplicates??? (Hint - it _won't_ be me.)

Ken wrote:
"My vote is to set a $5 entry fee per entry and that no limit be set for how
many can enter."

James responds:
The entry fee will be based on the Cost of the contest, but I agree that a
$5.00 figure is the most likely. But the "no limit" aspect is really up to
Erik - he's the one who has to scan in all of the images. If you live in
Seattle, close enough to Erik to be able to physically pick up prints and
slides from him (rather than depending upon the mail), that might be a
different story.

As I mentioned in another post - each entry will consist of multiple images:

........................ 2 images/entry........3 images/entry.......4
images/entry...........5 images/entry
300 entries....... 600 images.............900 images...........1200
images..............1500 images
400 entries....... 800 images.............1200 images.........1600
images..............2000 images
500 entries.......1000 images............1500 images..........2000
images.............2500 images
1000 entries.....2000 images............3000 images..........4000
images.............5000 images

If it takes 5 minutes per image to scan it in, then adjust/tweak it in an
image processing program, and write it to the hard drive in the correct
place, it would take 50 hours of work to process 600 images, 125 hours to
process 1500 images. I imagine that the average number of images will
probably be between 3-4, which would, if we got 300 entries, take around
87.5 hours to process.

I just want to reiterate my fear about shipping people's prints and or
slides across the country to "scanning volunteers". Unless or until I can be
convinced that this can be done 100% safely, I'm not in favour of anyone
other than Erik doing the scanning, and I hesitate to even suggest that the
limit on total entries be higher than the figure of 300.

James Purchase
Toronto


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