On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Phil Edwards wrote:
Something that now *does* occur to me is that I would like to retire
from the aquascaping contest. Not exactly a beginner job, but I'd be
willing to help render assistance to a new coordinator. But it's
been five years, and I'm pretty tired of the abuse from the folks I'm
out-of-touch with.
What would this require?
The aquascaping contest "chair", at a minimum, needs to coordinate
and/or delegate these 87 simple tasks: :)
* contact forums, magazines, clubs, individuals, about the contest on
an ongoing basis before and during the contest.
* Locate and select judges for the event who will be available during
the proper time period. Someone also needs to be a liaison to the
judges during the judging period to insure they are "whipped" into
finishing on time (mostly not a problem last year!), have any of their
questions answered, and choose a best in show
* Printouts or CD's to judges (mostly not needed... most recently for
Amano, though)
* receive entries through the mail, and enter or merge that
information to the contest website.
* Proofing of entries, correct spelling, fix up images, etc.
* Technical contact to administor the contest website
* Make CD-ROM of website
* Order ribbons to be presented at the convention and/or mailed out
* Coordinate with vendor contact guy or convention people to get some
prizes for the top winners
* Send thank-you notes or gifts to the judges
In the past few years, I've done all but the first one of these. All
these jobs could be delegated. I'm also happy to continue doing
administration of the website and creating the CD-ROMs, possibly
assisting another person through most of the other tasks the first year.
Some optional duties to delegate or eliminate, if energy and time allows:
* Review rules with other volunteers, manage squabbles that ensue
* Print out 8x10's of entries for convention
Now here's an interesting thing. A lot of these tasks are pretty easy
and straightforward, right? You'd think that folks would be jumping all
over each other to help like the way Paul was yesterday? It's AMAZING
how quiet it gets on the contest "volunteers" list when I actually send
this out and ask who'd like to take on one of the jobs, especially
contacting magazines or ordering ribbobs. What I find is there's a lot
of talk and not a lot of doing.
One other thing is that in reality it's not as bad as it looks in that
list.
- Erik