Forwarded mail....

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

Just in case we're not depressed enough, here is a note from Charlene
about donations/prizes.  I now completely regret that we tried to combine
the contest and the convention, as I know we could have gotten more prizes
by just soliciting them separately the way we did last year.

Currently, there are a total of TWELVE entries in the aquascaping contest.
I suspect this might double by closing, but still seems like we're going
to have only 1/3 the response of last year.

I attribute this to a few things:

  1. Crappy PR.  Of our dozens of "volunteers", nobody really wanted to
take on the job of PR like they did last year.  Only one person bothered
to send out mass announcements, and even so, it was done late in the
process and he was very "sleepy" about it.

  2. Crappy PR.  Mary took a full four months too long to get TAG out
which announced it.  Most likely, any prospective entrants took one look
at the deadline and thought "I can't be ready in less than a month."

  3. Crappy PR.  Charlene thought that just sending out donation request
letters through the mail asking for donations was going to do the trick.  
Last year, James e-mailed people.  He actively sought contacts,
interacted, adjusted.  Charlene just didn't LISTEN when I said we needed
to do this again.  Because of the late start and no replies from the
manufacturers, there are no prizes listed on the contest page, and people
are not motivated nearly as much to enter.  Frankly, it's going to look
PATHETIC come November when I have to actually include this donation list.

Anyway, I'm not screaming and running around over this.  More just
confirms what I suspected for a bit.

  - Erik

-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 07:46:04 -0400 
From: Charlene Nash <ecn@tennis.org>
To: "'erik@thekrib.com'" <erik@thekrib.com>

I see we are getting a bit of flac (sp?) about prizes. So far all we have
are Jungle labs stuff (box is tiny and I have not even opened it
yet),Rainbow aquatics (haven't opened that but list is fairly inexpensive
items,) a cannister filter from Energy savers. So it is a start but not the
equal of the large bowfront of last year. I have been so busy trying to set
up my new exhibit prototypes at our warehouse with lighting, washing gravel,
all the details out there but should be able to start pressuring some
companies in a couple of weeks. Diana is on it as well now, contacting
people for the second time. I really am surprised that some companies didn't
just volunteer some nice items but maybe James pressured them more. Will
keep at it though. Charlene

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