Re: 2 1/2 weeks to go......

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, James Purchase wrote:

> 1. I assume that Erik is continuing his work both on registration of
> entrants and web design for the judge's section of the site. 

Registration continues, with 1-3 new entries per day integrating. Still
keeping up.  Taking a quick peek at the site right now, WOW, we just got
two paludariums registered!  2 artificial, 1 biotope, 32 garden.  I expect
a portion of these will be blowoffs (only 18 of the garden entries have
sent photos for instance).  We have checks for 11 entries total.

We'll have to see by the numbers at the end, but I will probably recommend
that we combine sizes for the three non-garden categories.

Judges section is finished.  I'll run it through some testing locally
here, because I *really* don't want to enter bogus entries for testing.

> help you with anything else? I'm sort of at loose ends here.... nothing to
> do.....(other than stir up trouble on the APD....).

I think just getting the word out and encouraging people to enter is the
best thing all of us can do.  I just sent a bulk e-mail to everyone who
entered but didn't complete their entries reminding them of the deadline.

> 3. If we DON'T get the full subscription of 250 entries by the 30th, should
> we consider extending the deadline to the 15th of October????? Would it even
> matter?

Tough call.  What would be a reasonable MINIMUM?  50?  I
think there's a good chance we'll make that by the deadline.  Personally,
I think it would be very cool to be able to have it closed, possibly
judged by the AGA Convention on November 3rd, so we could show some sort
of preview at the convention.

> 4. I have yet to contact the judges as a group and thank them for agreeing
> to be involved (I'll need Kaspar Horst's e-mail address, if Karen is reading
> this, please send it to me privately). I think it might be nice to just let
> them know that we appreciate their effort and review what we expect of them
> (their honest opinions, following the "Guidelines" from the web-site,
> etc.......) and the mechanics of how this judging bit will work. It would
> probably be best to let Erik finish the site before I do any of this.

If we close on the normal time, and we have all the entries complete
within a week, we could just take the judges as a group and show them the
mechanics with the actual entries.  Since it's easy for them to change
their scores, they have time to muck around a bit. 

> 6. Prize allocation is something that we can discuss later and I don't think
> it can be "nailed down" until we actually see the winning entries. It would
> be kind of dumb to give an expensive CO2 regulator to someone who submitted
> as an entry a 10 gallon tank with plastic plants (or would it????). Also, if
> we don't get entries in each category, that means that we shall have extra
> prizes. Since I believe that we decided that we want to spread the wealth
> around as much as possible, it would probably be better if we made some
> "Runner Up" or "Honorable Mention" awards rather than just giving the
> winners multiple items, but this is open to discussion from everyone and I'm
> open to suggestion.

One thing I catch myself thinking is "Oh, better not put the All-Glass
tank in such and such category, because the guy from Singapore might win
and then it'd be a real bitch to send it to that country".  This is why
I'm trying to keep the rest of you guys sheltered from the actual entries
as much as possible.  I think it would be good to choose the prizes based
on the particular category AND the statistics within the category (i.e.
looks like > 284 liter aquatic gardens will be the most competitive, so
perhaps we put the big tank as the prize for this, maybe the CO2 reg as
the 1st prize for the medium size garden, etc...).   

  - Erik


-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com

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