Fellow Board Members, I corresponded with Erik off-list to see if he might be able to attend this week's Board Meeting given the fact that Matt Kaufman has indicated that he will probably be attending and is wanting to discuss our "unique auction methods." Unfortunately, Erik won't be able to make it, but he did take the time to provide some good input and he gave permission for me to forward his comments to the Board List. I will have a copy of Erik's comments with me for reference, but I probably won't include it in the text of the agenda, so, please read on... Thanks, Rick -----Original Message----- From: Erik Olson [mailto:erik@thekrib.com] Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 2:03 PM To: rick-rose@comcast.net Subject: Re: Board Meeting - Auction Discussion Hi Rick, Matt e-mailed me as well. From his e-mail, I think he definitely would like to see GSAS go the direction of the other 99% of the clubs out there in their auctions, i.e. having the auctioneer stand in one place while people bring things to and from them. He felt it was a lot of work running around all evening. Maybe he's right, we do end up working all three auctioneers ALL night, where other clubs rotate so they're only working the auctioneers 1/3 the time, but have more runners to pick up the slack. But I like our own approach, if only that we're the only club that has this little quirky system, and also because I think it actually works very well for us. I actually *enjoy* going and picking up the items I sell, coming up with little stupid jokes about them, or combining weird items into an unexpected lot. Another cool perk is that we can swap out or add auctioneers completely seemlessly (as worked with Gilead and with myself last Tuesday). I've seen the other clubs have "slow" auctioneers that just drag the evening down. WIth us, that's only every 3 items at worst. If the issue of selling a dozen of one item comes up, it's important to note that we CAN do this, but only if the auctioneer and the recorder agree to it in advance AND the recorder is ready to jot down all the bidders by hand on a piece of paper (and spend the next few minutes scanning each won item into the computer & labeling the tags with the winners themself). The problem is that once things start going at 7:30, it's very hard to stop everything and say "OK, let's review some basics." Better to say "No, no mult items!" I don't think that "melding" the approaches is necessarily good, because then you have a group of pre-runners, computer operators, post-runners and auctioneers, i.e. TWELVE people! Twice as much as we have right now (auctioneers and computer people). I think it's far better to stick to one or the other. Note that with the single-auctineer approach, the computer setup typically used is far different than ours. We could probably use it, but it would need some modification. I kinda wish I could be there on Thursday, but kinda am glad I can't. Kathy's working full days now, and we've got to be packed for Portland Thursday if we're going to take off when she gets off work Friday night. Markus is home sick with me today, so they'll be wanting me to do more work Wednesday and Thursday. What a week. Hopefully this will be of some use to you -- if you want to forward to the board or bring to the meeting, that's OK. But this is your guys' fight now. If you like the current approach, explain why and stick with it! But there's no reason we can't try something different, right? I bucked the system when I added the computers. We couln't have done $800+ worth of splits before then, and now it's pretty painless. - Erik
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