Re: [AGA-mcm] ACA Spy Report, lessons to learn #126, "purpose of the convention"

[Cheryl Rogers <cheryl@rightstuffwebsites.com>]

Being the newbie on this block, perhaps I should siddown and shaddup, but I 
am very glad to read all of this. With plenty of input, AGA is in a fine 
position not to reinvent the wheel (again).

 Mike Hellweg wrote:
> Hello all,
  Our experience was one of a large
> combination of "how not to do it".

I think we had one of these, in many ways. In some ways it was fine.

The problems were nearly
> all "behind the scenes".

Ditto.

> 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. 

It was the opposite at AGA 2004: the BOD felt ignored or outright rejected, 
even though we could see that there was work to be done and we were 
volunteering to help.

> 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.

Hmmm. What did we charge? I don't remember.

> 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 - 

I'm personally not aware of much of that going on at AGA--but then I'm 
pretty oblivious.

> 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.  

Don't we have a rule that they must be registered for the convention in 
order to sell? Are we enforcing that? How?

> 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.  

Oh, ouch. And to think I get peeved when Kent gives away the farm when they 
pack up.

> 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.

That's funny. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but I appreciate a fine 
irony. :-)


Cheryl
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