Re: GWAPA Proposal rough draft2 (fwd)

[Neil Frank <nfrank@mindspring.com>]

At 07:10 PM 1/3/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>I gave Larry the bag, and told him that the extra prints were for the
>auction, and that he could use what cards he wanted as "thank you's" to
>conference organizers, and the rest could either be sold or run thrugh the
>auction.  I don't know where the bag went, and I don't think Larry did
>either.  Very quickly people were helping themselves to both prints and
>cards.  I know a couple of the less attractive prints made it to the
>auction, but I'm sure that these weren't used to best advantage.
>

An FYI --

When I picked up my registration for the convention on the first day, I was
handed a nice set of note cards AND a picture (as you know i was only a
"focus speaker"). I didnt want to take the picture with me, so I asked if
it could be set aside for a later pickup. When I came back i was politely
informed that offering me the pic was an error -- that they were only
intended for the main speakers.  Totally understandable. However, later
during the weekend - when i passed by the desk, someone called me over and
said that they had a picture for me after all. I dont remember who this
was, but was pretty sure it was someone from the Dallas group. At that
point, i think i was given a choice from what seemed to be only a few left.
I really appreciate getting the picture- thanks Karen. 
--Neil

BTW, I really liked the idea of the focus groups. This brings up another
issue. When the concept was first presented to me, I was asked to be a
discussion leader. During the convention, I was informed that I was a
"speaker" and that there was another person designated as the moderator. I
also didnt know ahead of time that I was doing 2 sessions. Not a problem,
but just another example of apparently adhoc scheduling and decisions. To
me this is very consistent with a brand new organization who have never run
a convention and implementing stuff for the very first time. 

Wouldnt expect this from the NEC. Even the Raleigh Aq Society who has had
conventions for the past 20 years will have a screwup every few years - one
serious example had to do with bad or late publicity. Usually we get 125+
attendees. One year, 50-60. Another time, an extremely unorganized auction.
This actually hurt even more, because not only did the club miss out on a
lot of expected money, but regulars stopped coming for a few years. For
RAS, I believe the messups were attributed in part to cycling of club
leadership and a new group of relatively unseasoned conference committee
chairs. Continuity of knowedge is great but not always easy to achieve.

On the subject of silent auctions, I thought the first one AGA had in TN
which i believe was organized by Mary  was great. Like others indicated
here thru emails, not the case with the first few rounds in Dallas.  I am
still amazed that so many things appeared to go well at Dallas given the
amount of stuff that they had going on.   


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