I guess because I am the member of a local club with an extremely strong treasury and a lot of inertia, the idea that local clubs chose to run a national convention MAINLY as a money-maker was an eye-opener. Mike's comments also made me more aware of the necessity to make SURE that a local club NEVER feels that AGA management isn't ready and willing to help them. I don't think there is any doubt that this has NOT happened so far, but it's something we should be aware of, and guard against in the future.
Karen----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Olson" <erik@thekrib.com>
To: "AGA Advisory Committee" <aga-mcm@thekrib.com> Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 10:58 PMSubject: Re: [AGA-mcm] ACA Spy Report, lessons to learn #126, "purpose ofthe convention"
I guess the original reason I forwarded this e-mail was to point out (by analogy) that it's easy to veer off into tangents and concentrate on odd problems, and forget the purpose of why we're trying to put on the convention. And I think we've all now proven that point today, as we've all now veered completely onto not even our own tangent, but another club's... I think I regret the original posting now, sorry!- Erik On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Larry Lampert wrote:The whole ACA members and worse non-members selling fish out of the room thing has been discussed ad naseum on many lists. It really is not a problem for us (AGA) yet. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. We as a club either AGA or ACA can not regulate what someone does in their private hotel room. We do not have the right nor the means or desire to do so. The only thing we can do is try to ensure that everyone in the hotel is a registered club member and do not let people advertise their lists on hotel doors, etc. The alternative is we just accept it and sell advertising space on a board in the lobby like the ACA does. I don't think this would be a good move for us at this point. We don't have a problem yet why would we want to create it? Yes, there is money to be made selling fish. No IMO we do not have a "better sense of community" than the ACA. Just look at all of the grumbling from this years convention. As we get bigger we can expect more of it. People tend to like to complain more than they like to work to change things. However, the ACA certainly has it's share of good people too just like the AGA. The bottom line is that we very much alike with the exception that the typical median income of an AGA attendee is higher than that of a typical ACA attendee. Therefore there is more of a threshold to pay a higher amount per member for conventions,etc., and less of a need for members to have their hobby pay for itself. Regards, Larry --- Cheryl Rogers <cheryl@rightstuffwebsites.com> wrote:Erik Olson wrote:You can't enforce what people sell out of theirrooms. Absolutely. And I don't think we should police that (at this time). I was wrong about my earlier question/comment. In the convention doc, it says that *buyers* must be registered for the convention (Scott--because of the non-profit thing?). But here's a quote from 2.7.4. "Each seller must be a member of the Local or the AGA unless the seller donates the proceeds in full to the Convention." But this rule applies only to the auction--in the convention doc, we do not address the question of whether people may sell out of their rooms. And I don't think we should, at this time. Theproblem is, I think, more of an ethical one forthe ACA. People at theAGA conventions (and maybe plant hobbyists as awhole) still seemoverall interested in "supporting the AGA".Yes. I agree. Are cichlids bigger money than plants? I suspect so. I don't really know. So I should siddown and shaddup now. :-) Perhaps we in the AGA enjoy more of a sense of community than we thought. Good. Then I am in the right place. Cheryl _______________________________________________ AGA-mcm mailing list AGA-mcm@thekrib.com http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/aga-mcm_______________________________________________ AGA-mcm mailing list AGA-mcm@thekrib.com http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/aga-mcm-- Erik Olson erik at thekrib dot com _______________________________________________ AGA-mcm mailing list AGA-mcm@thekrib.com http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/aga-mcm
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