Hello all,As a member of one of the clubs "burned" by the ACA, and as one of the chairs/workers for that convention, I can comment on what happened, at least at our convention. I don't think the problems we had apply to the AGA, but as you can tell by what follows, I still have a bad taste in my mouth. If any of it serves as a cautionary tale for the AGA convention, then I have made my point. Our experience was one of a large combination of "how not to do it".
We had a local committee of 17 people (12 of which had worked on several previous ACA conventions, including 2 successful ones here in St. Louis in 1978 and 1988). So inexperience was not a factor. Our committee worked for 24 months to put the convention together. As far as the attendees were concerned, we received nearly overwhelming compliments on the success of their part of the convention. The problems were nearly all "behind the scenes".
What was a major factor was that the ACA folks from out of town that promised to help us work did nothing. We never even saw most of the ACA BOD - even though most of them were in attendance. When we did ask for help, many of our people were told, point blank, that the respondees "came to play, not work". Our people, who were expecting relief from ACA people, got no help and wound up putting in 17 - 20 hour days for the entire week. We lost several active members after that convention due to extreme burn out. That was 7 years ago, and some of them still only occasionally show up to meetings or auctions.
Coupled with that was a decline in expected/promised manufacturer's donations and an insistance by the ACA that we charge $400 or more plus donations for the tables in the Vendor room (which our club finally waived about a month before the convention - more $$ lost, but we wouldn't have had any Vendors if we kept to that), and an insistance that we do a 50/50 auction.
Because of that 50/50 auction, most of the ACA sellers understandably decided to sell their fish directly out of their rooms rather than give half of their money to the ACA - which they felt didn't really need it. Unfortunately, part of that 50% split would have gone to our local club to help defray the costs. We were counting on $7 - $8K from that.
What we ran into was that there were a FEW sellers who used the ACA discount on their rooms, but didn't register for the convention. They did not come to hear the talks, but ONLY to sell fish from their rooms. These were only a few folks, but research after the auction showed that they were some of the big sellers in previous ACA convention auctions. That meant we did not get registration money from them, nor did we get any split of the money from their sales of fish. More $$ lost.
Finally, on tear down day, our workers were so tired and overwhelmed and did not have ANY help from the ACA leadership that there was wholesale theft (intentional and unintentional) from the show room during tear down. 30 - 40 tanks, and over 150 sponge filters, which were supposed to be sold to the benefit of our club, just walked out of the room. Several dozen fish also disappeared from tanks in the show room, which we had to pay for. I believe those problems were fixed in subsequent ACA conventions, but I don't know since I quit the ACA in disgust after that convention.
Finally, we spent over a year arguing over the proceeds from raffle ticket sales of about $800, which were on a tank that I and another shop donated to OUR club, not the ACA. They felt they should get a cut of those ticket sales since the rest of the financial results were so poor.
Our club, which was realistically expecting to make over $10 K, made $1400. Our 17 workers decided that if the ACA ever wanted to host a convention in St. Louis again, we'd just each write our club a $100 check and come out ahead.
I don't know about the other clubs involved, but we certainly weren't whining. If that's what the ACA is still calling it - I'm glad I don't waste my money on membership!
Mike Hellweg Missouri Aquarium Society, Inc.----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Olson" <erik@thekrib.com>
To: <aga-mcm@thekrib.com> Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 11:15 AMSubject: [AGA-mcm] ACA Spy Report, lessons to learn #126,"purpose of the convention"
Here's another of what might be close to my last ACA "spy reports". A current topic of debate: representatives from two local clubs are whining that they didn't make enough money from the conventions that were held by their respective clubs (two of the last ten years). And the reason both cite for the failure is that more people bought fish out of others' rooms or the rental tanks in the show room, than at the auction. Both insinuated that their clubs aren't going to put on another ACA convention because "financially it's just not worth it".Incidentally, my Bay Area mole, also a prominent ACA guy, says that often the ACA only makes 2-4k per convention, so factor that into this year's "disappointment", considering that an ACA will have 4-8 times the attendance of our own conventions.Amongst the talk of taxing room sales, banning rental tanks, etc, Ron Coleman eighs in with (IMHO) some points that we might also consider relevant to our recent convention experiences:---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:46:32 -0800 From: Ronald M. Coleman <rcoleman@cichlidresearch.com> Reply-To: ACA Board and Cadre <aca-cadre@thekrib.com> To: ACA Board and Cadre <aca-cadre@thekrib.com> Subject: Re: [Aca-cadre] Room sales, rental tanks Hi folks, I have returned from Costa Rica (tons of rain down there) and have tried to read the various posts on the issue of room sales and rental room sales. My position is this: the purpose of the convention is not to make money. No where in the Bylaws of the ACA does it say that holding a convention should make a lot of money for the local club (or anyone else). It DOES say that one of the explicit AIMS of the ACA is "Section 5. To provide a means for the purchase, sale and exchange of cichlids by individuals." I think that the ACA should provide as many possible ways for this to occur. Room sales and rental tank sales directly contribute to meeting the mission of the association and I adamantly support both. Personally, I always rent a tank in the rental room which I use to store the fish that I buy prior to the auction. There are good reasons to buy fish at the auction but there are also lots of reasons to buy fish out of rooms or out of the rental tanks. For example, while the price at the auction is uncertain, the price at these other options is more fixed. There are advantages to each. Also, I am mostly interested in buying fish in large enough quantities to be useful for my research. Single fish or even pairs do not interest me, thus much of the auction is of less interest to me, though I typically sit through the whole thing and occasionally get something I like. Room sales and rental tank sales allow me to look closely at the fish as well as buy larger quantities. I got one of the main species I now work on in my lab, Stomatepia mariae, because I was able to buy 50 of them at once from a room, something I could not have done in the auction. Another species we work alot on, Archocentrus spinossissimus, was purchased from the rental tanks (from Jeff Rapps) because I could get a good look at the individuals. By the way, I liked the way that the Jordan Donations were done a few years ago, namely in large lots, rather than in small groups. We need to encourage people to sell large groups of fishes (6 to 10+) as well as the traditional bag of a pair or 4-6 individuals. Doing so will help people not to mix named geogrraphic varieties because they could only get one here and one there. Bottom line: encourage any (legal) way of getting fish from seller to buyer. The profits of the local club come dead last in my list of considerations. -- Ron acawebmaster@cichlid.org _______________________________________________ AGA-mcm mailing list AGA-mcm@thekrib.com http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/aga-mcm
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