NJAS 50th -- summary for those that missed it.

["S. Hieber" <shieber@yahoo.com>]

The NJAS 50th Anniversary Event was a pretty good show. 
Very well organized although the talks all ran late --
enough that the moved the awards ceremony from lunch to
9:00pm!  The judging was still going on when lunch needed
to start.

When I got there, we were to share a room with Lee Finley
and Pam Marsh.  But the room wouldn't hold all the tables
tables :-0 .

So AGA was moved to a table out of the vendor area (at the
opposite end of the the hotel form the Shows) to a position
right in front of the main Fish Show room.

We ran through about half or better of the AGA2K3 flyers
that I got from Cheryl and 30 or more AGA flyers.  I gave
about half of what I brought to Ray Lucas, who told me he
had run out of AGA brochures. Did we send him AGA2K3 flyers
previously -- I wish I had thought of it before now. 
Anyway, he's right up there with the postmaster general for
AGA pamphlet distribution  ;-) .

Sure wish we could pin a date for next year -- his schedule
is filling and then there's the other matter that drains
his time.

His biggest advice for the 2003 convention was to not put
the talks back-to-back because it cuts down too much on the
mingle and shmooz time (my choice of words) and folks need
that to feel like they really had a god time -- not bad for
"business" either all the way around.

I talked with a number of folks about how much the hobby
companies are cutting back, shrinking or ending donations
and programs, and laying off employees.

The NJAS folks were extremely accomodating yet I didn't win
any raffles -- go figure.  I'll pen a than you letter to
them from the Board unless anyone objects.

There were reportedly 170 registrants but I never saw more
than about 80-90 folks (awards ceremony and the main
auction)

There were maybe 40-50 bags of plants at the auction
(almost all swords and anubias) --  a drop in the auction
bucket -- the auction is probably still going on  ;-)  .  I
didn't hang around long enough to see what the TAG/PAM
packets went for.

Pam Chim and Paul Loiselle gave the best talks -- well
organized, informative, and enthusiastic. I'd guess Pam's
was the same one as at NEC last spring. Rosario LaCourte
ran through highlights from several score decades of slides
of pics, lots of fun.

It wasn't ACA (at least not as it's been described to me)
but it was pretty good for fish folk.

sh

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