Re: Karen's and Erik's comments

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

Mmmm...... you're very right in that point Karen - I don't want it to look
like we (the committee) is second-guessing the Judges, so I don't mind the
committee not having any say in who gets a prize. And Erik's comments
regarding not giving actual prizes to People's Choice and Entrant's Choice
(if we use that) is fine as well......maybe the "bragging rights" are
enough.

My main concern was that we have more than enough prizes to cover all 36
potential win, place or show winners in each of the maximum 12 categories we
have set up - but it looks like we might NOT have entries in all 12
categories. Another alternative (if we want to spread the prizes to as many
people as possible) would be for Erik to split the Aquatic Gardens
categories down into sub-categories, if there continues to be a huge
imbalance in the number of entries in that class as compared to others.

Of course, we won't know for sure until next Monday morning...... so no use
fretting over it just yet. We can always use the "excess" merchandise to
equalize the values of the prizes we award in the different categories (we
don't have 12 prizes @ $200.00 and 12 @ $100.00 and 12 @ $50.00, for
example). This is something the committe can play with once the entries are
all in and the judges are doing their "thing".

One thing I'd like to make everyone aware of is a little e-mail exchange I
had with a USENET reader following my latest "notice" (LAST CALL). She shot
me a private message accusing me of spamming the newsgroups with a marketing
ploy and said that I was "selling" something. I responded to her by saying
that we were a group of hobbyists holding a Showcase/Contest and we were not
selling anything other than appreciation of a beautifully aquascaped
aquarium. I suggested that she visit botht the event web site and the AGA
web site to assure herself that we were both non-commercial and legitimate.
She didn't bother to look obviously, as I just got another string of
curses......... some people's children.....

I believe that Erik also had a conversation with someone regarding the fact
that we are charging people to enter. I never envisioned that people would
be this cheap - it was surely not in my mind that the AGA (or any other
body) should pick up the whole tab for this sort of event. I'll be rather
disappointed if this ends up costing the AGA a dime, I would hope that we
would at least get sufficient entries to cover the costs. Although I am
heartened to see the range of countries where our entries are coming from.

James

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