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Ok, I haven’t heard from the rest of you folks.
Should I make a motion, or should we discuss this some, first_ If we’re
going to do it, I’d love your input on who we should get as a
speaker. Obviously, I’d want a U.S. (or at least N.A. speaker) to keep
the costs down. I know that sometimes NEC has extra free room nights
because of the size of the convention. If AGA will pay for the transportation,
I can ask Janine if NEC can find them a corner to hang their hat.
Alternately, if there’s someone within driving distance who could do a
talk, we could pick up the room cost. We had both Erik Do and Luis last year, so I don’t want to
use either of them. Jeff Senske made Janine crazy. (though it wasn’t
his fault that he never got there; the snow storm took care of that… he
spent the weekend in the Chicago) Does anyone know if George Lo can do a
talk? (I don’t think we want a demo again… they are too hard to
orchestrate) What about Jason Baliban? Ghazanfar for a Crypt
talk? I suppose we could ask Jay Luto to do something on photographing
planted tanks. Any other possibilities? This could be a good
opportunity to “test drive” a newer speaker that we might want to
consider for AGA in the future. If the BOD agrees that we should do this, we could move the
discussion of who to the MC list for more input. Karen From: aga-sc-bounces@thekrib.com
[mailto:aga-sc-bounces@thekrib.com] On Behalf Of S. Hieber I
should add that, although we don't have final figures yet, we did much better
at the convention than I had estimated days befroe the event. With several
thousand dollars f savings on Amano travel, very robust DVD sales, and a much
higher percetnage of auction sales than we've ever had before, rather than
netting in the neighborhood of $2g, the final figure probably will be closer to
$6g or $7g. Putting some of that to work at NEC wouldn't be a financial strain. sh From: S. Hieber <shieber@yahoo.com> I
don't see why not. I have watched aquatic gardening become a bigger part of the
discussions at NEC over the last few years as more folks in those old
traditional fish clubs (some the oldest in America) slowly grew aquatic
gardeners. Even when a blizard made it nearly impossoble for so many folks to
attend, we still had a decent turnout on Friday (the peak of the blizzard) and
a very good turnout on Saturday. I think it would be a great place to usefully
apply more of AGA's resources. sh From: Karen Randall <karenran@verizon.net> Scott wrote: When
we say we , as ome of us sometimes do, AGA should be doing more, what more?
What other demand(s) needs to be filled by the AGA? And as Karen points
out, who will do the more? Imo, this is the form of a
real idea, such and such specific persons should do such and such
specific tasks to accomplish this or that particular thing. The very
general stuff, AGA should help clubs (how? who knows?), AGA should change it's
mission (to what end? who knows?), isn't really productive. Show me something
for which there is a demand not being met in the community and
someone in AGA to do some specific tasks to meet that demand by using
AGA resources, that's something real we can deal with. When AGA approaches
things that way, it usually does very well -- the convention, TAG, bookstore
and DVDs are great examples. I’ll tell you somewhere that there is a demand and a core
group of workers who have consistently, over MANY years now (more than the
convention has been in existence) put in a tremendous amount of effort.
That is the NEC convention. You could say that “AGA” does a
lot for the convention already. But that really means that Karen, Scott
and David do a lot for the NEC convention, and the only back-up is supplies of
TAG and brochures. NEC does a LOT for AGA in return. They give us a
large meeting room for two hours, free of cost. They give us Vendor room
space, free of cost, and they carefully coordinate with me to make sure that
the plant speaker they bring in (at large cost to them, and free of cost to
AGA) is a well-known, top quality speaker. This is a tremendous amount of
exposure for AGA… You may be seeing a pattern here.<g> There
are over 20 local clubs involved with NEC, ranging along the entire northeast
seaboard (and a little inland, since there are Pennsylvania clubs as
well<g>) NEC has always brought in a plant speaker. That speaker
typically speaks during the main part conference schedule. Then, because
I usually know them personally and can work it out, they typically give a
second talk at the AGA meeting. This year, NEC is having a “planted
tank theme”. The “big name” speaker will be Ole
Pedersen. But he will already be giving two talks during the main
conference schedule, so I hesitate to ask him to do a third. I have also
been asked to do an updated version of my Thailand talk for the banquet. (I
will have been to Thailand again at that point, so there will be a lot of new
material included) There will be a plants-only auction on Friday night as
well. I don’t think there has ever been a conference, outside of
AGA with so much to offer planted tank enthusiasts. The problem is our AGA meeting on Friday afternoon.
Usually, I either have the “main” plant speaker do something, or I
put together a talk. Sometimes David or Kim Bryan has done something.
I suppose I COULD try to put together a second talk for Friday afternoon, but,
honestly, I’d rather not. Could AGA pay for a speaker for that
slot? If so, who should we ask? Ole is speaking on: The
algal-free planted aquarium - is it really possible? and CO2 fertilization of
planted tanks! Why is it sometimes necessary?
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