Has Bailin ever done a talk? I know he can aquascape, but I don’t
want to go the demo route again.
Karen
From: aga-sc-bounces@thekrib.com
[mailto:aga-sc-bounces@thekrib.com] On Behalf Of Cheryl Rogers
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 8:40 AM
To: Aquatic Gardeners Association Board
Subject: Re: [AGA-sc] Forums and questions
Jason Baliban? He spoke at PAPAS and is popular right now.
Bailin Shaw?
Cheryl
Karen Randall wrote:
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
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.
From: S. Hieber <shieber@yahoo.com>
To: Aquatic Gardeners Association Board <aga-sc@thekrib.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 7, 2008 7:40:37 AM
Subject: Re: [AGA-sc] Forums and questions
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.
From: Karen Randall <karenran@verizon.net>
To: Aquatic Gardeners Association Board <aga-sc@thekrib.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 6, 2008 10:21:39 AM
Subject: Re: [AGA-sc] Forums and questions
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?
Karen
_______________________________________________ AGA-sc mailing list AGA-sc@thekrib.com http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/aga-sc
|