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[AGA-sc] Phone Conversation with Jim
I called Jim at SFBAAPS this morning to try and figure out a couple of
alarming points brought up by Scott:
1. Who is in charge here?
2. What are they doing?
3. What do we the AGA need to do to make stuff happen?
In particular, we need figured out by February 1st:
* Hotel Contract
* Committee Heads
* Speakers
* Financial Arrangement
We talked for the better part of an hour.
HOTEL: He's going to get ahold of Larry today, and the plan is for Larry
to handle the hardcore negotiations,
namely getting them to accept Scott's counter-proposal. He himself is
going up on Saturday to speak to Jean and
walkthrough the plan.
SPEAKERS: They have no speaker coordinator at all. They have not
contacted any speakers. Tom had
originally volunteered, but he appears to have backed out. Jim offered to
send me the "Program" again, but I said NO,
that's more a schedule of events than a speaker idea list. Instead, I got
him to flesh out his thoughts, which paraphrased
here, look more like a bid than anything they ever sent us on paper (GRR):
"We like the way GWAPA had a sort of 'theme' to their convention,
Cryptocorynes, and flew out the Crypt guy. Well, we don't
have any kind of theme, but I've got these four ideas that seem to be real
big in the hobby right now. First, "Mosses".
Everyone seems to be into mosses these days, all the exotic
varieties...even Java Moss is not really Java Moss now. So
we were thinking Professor Tan from Singapore would be a good speaker. We
have a contact for him. Only thing I was not
sure of is whether he speaks English."
"Then we thought we'd ask Claus Chri----Oh, OK, I guess we can't get Claus
then."
"Dave Wilson seems like a good alternative to Claus."
"Everyone really seems to be into photography, there's a photography forum
on every club forum these days,
people are posting their pictures...so we should get someone to talk on
photography. I was thinking of
Jay Luto, after seeing his website---Oh, do you have any other
suggestions?"
"Finally, and this seems a little esoteric, but freshwater shrimp are
popu--- that's right, an invert speaker! We
asked this one guy who sells them, but he wanted a $5000 speaking fee and
acted like a jerk when we asked if he'd do it
for free. There's this guy frank, who has a website, maybe he'd do it.
And there's this other guy on APC."
Surprisingly, I like this. The fact that they have no speaker chair means
nobody is actively working on contacting
these guys -- no wonder he doesn't want it posted! I made several
suggestions. First, Thumbs up on Dave Wilson and Moss guy.
Second, maybe we could find someone who actually photographs aquascapes
that would be able to set up equipment in "workshop"
style instead of showing lots of slides. Then, maybe Tom (who I think
once forwarded me a list of fascinating
contacts he had in the scientific community) could come up with a couple
of local speakers.
I suggested that maybe the AGA board could take over this job and insure
we got the speakers taken care of...
and he kind of went "Maybe I'll call Tom this week and see if he will..."
AUCTION: There are people interested. There are a couple of SFAS
auctioneers that might help out. Leon is local, and
interested in making it happen. I (Erik) think the AGA's goal should be
to talk with Leon and make sure HE's talking
with the SFAS guys.
FIELD TRIP: No chair. Some want to do Monterey Bay, but Scott has Jim
convinced that small groups, possibly unofficial,
are better (some to MBA, some to Tom's watering holes, some to fish
stores).
He realizes the MBA is a 2.5 hour drive each way, and would be bad for a
large organized field trip.
Jim is going to check in with Leon, who lives in Monterey and volunteers
there, and will check on bus rates as due diligence
on the field trip thing.
OTHER COMMITTEE CHAIRS:
* Jeff Kropp - Hospitality
* Registration - three volunteers - no chair, were thinking of asking
Cheryl (whew)
* PR - Skids/ Carleton Low
* Vendor - Phil Edwards
* Sponsors and Donation - no chair
Seems to me the biggest hole here is nobody wanting to deal with vendors.
So we should find out where Phil is on that.
FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENT: I mentioned that we're thinking of doing the
DFWAPC plan, and that the club should probably understand and agree before
we do anything further, as it will tick off folks otherwise. He mentioned
that while he was 100% with us on this, there were those "Why should we do
this for the AGA" people. I said, that's fine, and here's some good
counter-arguments (negotiatin g hotel, getting speakers, doing
registration, lots of A/V... I didn't say "we're doing most of the !@*&^$^
management too").
Anyway, I feel a lot better. As long as they are willing to hand over
some of the key areas like speakers, registration, vendors, and hotel,
we'll be OK.
- Erik
--
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com
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