Are We Having Fun Yet?

It's been a bit of a mystery to me exactly why I'm still on the board of the GCA. More precisely, no one could remember when I was first elected and therefore no one could figure out when exactly my term would end. In effect, I've been drifting on in this board role for years with no clear end in sight.

Apathy on the exact term length --by both the membership and me-- apparently seems to let things to pretty far. I'm also taking it as a respectable sign that I haven't done anything especially egregious that people are seeking to vote me out of office or displace me by running another candidate.

Anyway...

Michael Maltenfort was digging into the GCA by-laws on an unrelated matter and he happened to point out in email to the overall board the elections clause: The president, treasurer and IAGSDC delegate are elected in odd years while vice-president, secretary and alternate IAGSDC delegate are elected in even years. Oops.

I first joined the board in August of 2004, replacing the late Eric Calimag of Chicago. I finished his term as IAGSDC delegate, then was re-elected in 2005. rlegters became the IAGSDC delegate in 2007 and I became the alternate delegate --and have been ever since although I can't remember any subsequent re-election for my own office.

Until an hour ago, I thought my term would expire this month and I'd be free. According to the by-laws, my position isn't up for a vote until next year. Checking further into the by-laws though, there is a clause on term limits: no officer can be in the same office for more than two consecutive terms.

I've sent my notice to the board informing them that I'm outta here next week. I recommended they seek a volunteer to take the position until 2012 when they can be elected for a regular term, synchronizing once again with the by-laws. After nearly seven years on the board, I think I've done my part.

Since rlegters can't attend next week's IAGSDC delegates meeting, I'll be making the GCA reports in his stead. Since no one from the Chesapeake Squares was willing, kent4str will be their voting delegate. Fun.

The IAGSDC has decided to discontinue their bi-monthly mailout service. For many years, member clubs could send flyers or documents to the IAGSDC secretary who would then sort them all and mail copies to each member club in turn. Thus, every club would have every other club's festival flyers and only one person needed to have all of the contact information for each club.

Of course, there were occasionally problems: many individual clubs did not update the IAGSDC database when there was an address or board change. I'm sure more than one new club rep didn't fully comprehend the instructions (the IAGSDC doesn't do the photocopying for you: you must provide 70 copies, no more than 210 in total, all docs must be received by the IAGSDC by the first Saturday of the even numbered months, etc.). Despite the headaches however, it was a valuable service to those of us who run weekend festivals.

As I said at the opening, the IAGSDC has discontinued this service. Now all member clubs have to mail their own flyers to member clubs. And this now leads to a more difficult issue...

Now, more than ever, it is critical that member clubs keep their contact information current. I used the IAGSDC web site's member club "Fast Facts" to find addresses for clubs but then cross-checked against their individual web sites. For the most part, they matched but at least one --I'm looking at you, Sho-Me Squares!-- there was a discrepancy between the IAGSDC information and the club's web site.

Further, we now have to decide who is worth a mailing and who isn't. Each double-sided flyer costs us a little less than $0.05; mailing 20 copies costs $2.07, not including the cost of the envelope itself. I'm estimating a total cost of about $3.25 per 20 copy mail-out to a domestic US square dance club. Since there are about 60 member clubs, we have to cull the herd a bit to determine where we get the most bang for our square dance festival buck.

I'm currently working on flyer distribution for the DC Lambda Squares' two fly-ins: ACDC 2011 in February and Harvest Festival Hoedown 17 in November. Earlier this week, I sent copies of the flyers to most of the staff callers for both events (I'm hand-delivering flyers to John Marshall and Linda Kendall since they're local).

Our nearby regional clubs definitely get stacks of flyers as the bulk of our attendees from outside our own club come from them: Chesapeake Squares, Times Squares, Independence Squares, Hotlanta Squares and Delmarvelous Squares. We get sporadic attendance from other clubs: Boston Uncommons, Chi-Town Squares, Grand River Squares, Cadillac Squares, Gateway Squares, Sho-Me Squares and such. I'm sure Kris Jensen will share her stack of flyers with the Wilde Bunch. :-)

We do get some attendees from the west coast, but mostly for our ACDC event. Then again, they tend to be regulars and probably already registered while they were here last year, or are already aware of the event and are registering online. Would the flyers do any good there? Maybe... I'm sending some for ACDC to the Midnight Squares

And that leaves everyone else: Portland, Seattle, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, the rest of the SF Bay area, San Diego, Palm Springs, Long Beach, Sacramento, Phoenix, Tucson and so on. I have absolutely no idea which ones should be on our mailing list and which would be a waste of a dead tree for whatever reason.

I can't be the only person struggling to find a good way to tackle this issue. How are others tackling this problem?

For 2012 and beyond, I'm working on tracking the travels & adventures of our own club members so they can hand-delivery flyers to various clubs. I'm also taking flyer packets with me to the Atlanta IAGSDC convention in July to distribute to various clubs. That doesn't solve my current dilemma but the task will get better with some planning.

We're back in DC again after a fun weekend at the annual IAGSDC convention, this year in Chicago.

Our flight from Baltimore to Midway was pretty easy; the GO Express airport shuttle was a delight as well. And the hotel --wow! It's a beautiful bit of architecture with great staff.

The Chicago convention team had clearly worked hard to make this a great convention and it showed: all aspects were incredibly smooth, including check-in, dance spaces and the brunch & banquet. We didn't go on the fun badge tour but friends gave an enthusiastic report.

This convention was actually more about business than dancing for me again this year (although admittedly not as much as last year when I was the convention registrar). I attended the IAGSDC delegates meeting on behalf of the Gay Callers Association (non-voting), making a report to the delegates and collecting data for the GCA membership meeting immediately following. The big news largely was the confirmation that the 2014 convention will be in Salt Lake City, UT, and Times Squares of New York City expressed an interest in hosting the 2015 convention.

A handful of delegates expressed their bitter dissatisfaction that the delegates meeting was taking place on the Thursday before the convention, prior to Friday's opening ceremonies. I like having it earlier as it means the delegates don't have to sacrifice dancing time during the convention. Those objecting seemed to latch specifically onto an interpretation of the IAGSDC by-laws which declares the meeting must happen during the convention and the convention itself isn't considered to have started until the opening ceremonies, but that's grasping at straws, IMHO: I say the convention begins with the first scheduled event. I'll look more deeply into the IAGSDC by-laws later.

The GCA meeting was surprisingly uneventful as well. I know there's widespread dissatisfaction with this year's methodology for selecting & assigning non-staff callers to the guest spots but John Oldfield made a great speech which I think acknowledged the annoyance of many but reminded them firmly that the non-staff callers work at the pleasure of the host committee and as professionals, we should accept gratefully the opportunities we have. Ken Ritucci has completed his term as vice-president and is replaced by Arlene Kaspick; Arlene's role as secretary will now be filled by Jane Clewe. Interestingly, no one (including myself included) could remember precisely when rlegters was elected the primary IAGSDC delegates or when I became the alternate delegate so we weren't sure if our terms expired or not. I guess I'm the alternate delegate for life until I look up in my notes when our positions should be up for election.

A subsequent meeting of the new GCA board was very useful. I hope we repeat this in future as we can cover a lot more ground in one hour face-to-face than we can via email.

The convention planners' meeting was of great personal interest. Danny Lee has updated the IAGSDC web site to now allow convention planning documents to be uploaded directly, relieving Seth Levine & Ett McAtee of a huge amount of archiving work. I was able to upload some 20 documents during the meeting itself; there are many more but I didn't want to use up all of my wireless bandwidth too soon. I like that the Chicago convention has done away with the display of club banners. While they're very nice, it costs thousands of dollars to hang them, not to mention countless volunteer hours to request, receive, sort, store and return.

I was in five group photos this year, not including the all-dancers group photo, each with costume changes. They included: DC Lambda Squares, Chesapeake Squares, Ettseteras, GCA members, GCA board. I bought all but the GCA board photo. Some day, I'll have to frame or at least properly insert into photo albums all of the convention club photos I've collected over the years.

I had five calling gigs this year, two Mainstream and one each of Plus, Advanced and C1. In all, they went pretty well. I had planned to work from cards for the C1 and sight-resolve the rest but I ultimately used cards for the Advanced as well, largely as a safety precaution against nervousness. The Plus set stumbled once when my pilot and my alternate pilot square both broke down but that was easily handled. The second Mainstream seat crashed badly at least twice but I think the crowd laughed it off since that floor was composed heavily of newbie dancers and it was the last hour of the convention so all were more than a little brain-dead.

The big lesson for me was about focus. I readily admit I get nervous when there are other big-name callers in the hall watching and evaluating. Of course, I know they are there to be supportive and to see if there are tips they can offer which would make me a better caller but it raises the bar (and my blood pressure) a little. It's silly to be additionally nervous as I know they mean well and it's ridiculous that I should give extra effort in my calling when they're present: after all, shouldn't I be giving 110% to the *dancers* every time I'm on mic? Anyway, the big emotional wallop didn't happen this time.

My first gig was an Advanced set, with both Mike DeSisto (just finished) and Sandie Bryant (up next) in the hall. I just called as though they were just another pair of dancers and had no attack of nerves at all.

During my C1 tip, I had a single square on the floor. There were barely enough bodies available for a second square but only if both John Marshall and Mary Hutchison danced as well. And I wasn't nervous.

Mike Kellog caught the end of my first Mainstream set and complimented me on the singing call portion he had heard. I even had Mike DeSisto in one Mainstream set as a dancer and he said he liked it as well. I still think a little nervousness is good to force mental clarity and a best effort but I think I'm past the point of being near-paralysis.

Between the gigs and their prep time, the club photos, the misc costume changes and the meetings, I think I only danced 4-5 tips the entire weekend. Oddly enough, that's just fine with me. These conventions are as much about business and responsibilities for me as they are about dance time --which probably says a lot about my personality. This weekend was a good balance for me personally so I feel emotionally and mentally fulfilled. And I didn't embarrass my ancestors with my C2 dancing.

Outside of the convention itself, I had a great time Monday catching up with Rob Russo, a Chicago native we know from chorus connections. Eric Mulder (Boston) was able to join us on some of our morning & early afternoon tourist adventures and we had much fun with Steve Heyl and John Griffin (San Diego). There was much schmoozing during the convention itself after dancing at the hotel lounge with so many friends, as well as parties hosted by Brian Keating & Mark McLoney one night and Joe "Missy" Brown in his room another.

This was my first trip to Chicago and I'm looking forward to returning again some day. We're toying with gathering a bunch of friends from Grand Rapids and Cleveland for a Chicago weekend trip some day but have yet to compare & coordinate calendars to see when it might be viable.

I still have some work to do when we get home, beyond the laundry and deferred domestic duties. I need to write up my report to the GCA membership to give to our GCA secretary for inclusion in the minutes. The rest of our 2009 convention docs have to be annotated and uploaded to the IAGSDC web site. I have hundreds of photos to be labeled, sorted and posted. And somewhere in this mess, I have a full time job waiting for me for the balance of the week.

The club photography schedule has been released. I hadn't been especially looking for it but a recent email discussion among GCA members to ensure everyone knows the timing of the GCA group photo made me go look.

I'm relieved the club photos are scheduled by geographic area rather than, say, alphabetic order by club name. For those of us in several clubs, sorting by geography makes life much easier: we get it all over & done in a single block --unless you're allanh who apparently only joins clubs which are 1,000 miles or more apart. :-)

Here's mine, all on Friday, July 2:
3:40pm Chesapeake Squares
3:55pm DC Lambda Squares
4:15pm Ettseteras

The GCA group photo is some time around 11:30am on Friday, July 2, right after the opening ceremonies. There is a GCA board photo on Saturday, July 3, at 12pm but since my term expires as of this convention, I won't be part of this photo this year.

The 2009 IAGSDC convention wrapped up seven months ago. Slowly, we are winding down aspects of it: the telephone number was let go, the web site was dismantled, the domain name was allowed to expire, etc..

We still need to disburse the remaining funds, terminate the corporation, pay the final licensing & gov't fees, close the mailbox, close the checking account and make the final reports to the IAGSDC delegates in July, 2010.

One of the little surprises is how many telephone calls we're fielding at home from various convention suppliers who are keen on getting involved with our 2010 DC convention. I patiently explain that the convention rotates among many cities internationally and while it may yet come back to DC at some uncertain time in the future, it's not likely to happen on their watch. The prior IAGSDC convention in Washington was in 1994 so at 15 year intervals, the next probable window is 2024.

Their disappointment is palpable.

To their credit, they then start asking about how the convention is awarded, trying to see if there is some contact at a parent body which could possibly swing some business their way. Nope, sorry.

Well, might the next convention be in the area of DC next year? Nope, Chicago in 2010, Atlanta in 2011, Vancouver BC in 2012 and San Francisco in 2013. Thanks for playing though.

I think I'm going to return to my original policy of simply not answering the home phone at all, letting the answering machine screen the calls.

The wrapping up of the recent DC Diamond Circulate convention continues.

Anyone lose a Kodak EasyShare C530 digital camera or a Lexor 256 MB flash memory stick? Let me know.

( More financial details under the cut... )

There are miscellaneous other charges, including photocopying services, parking charges and such. It all adds up. Hopefully, we'll be able to produce a 99% complete detailed profit/loss statement and balance sheet in a month or so.

I couldn't sleep after 4am so I thought I'd do something seriously mind-numbing in the hopes it would bring on sleep. It didn't work, but I'm largely done the final reports I need to submit.

We had 878 paid registrants, including 39 first-time attendees and 18 day-trippers. This doesn't include the 12 calling staff, their spouses and four audio & flooring staff.

( Details under the cut... )

We haven't done our official post mortem for the convention, not to mention the volunteer party for all those who contributed. Still, I thought I'd scribble down a few thoughts before they're lost to Alzheimer's, denial or or therapy.

On the whole, my realm of responsibility --registration-- went pretty well. It's actually a larger role than just checking off people as they arrive: it's the focal point for customer information, directions, tour coordination and so much more. What was I thinking?

• I wish I had an extra hour to prepare before the desk officially opened the first time so I could have had absolutely every ready. I didn't have the printed lists I wanted so I would be ready to confirm tours and meals for those who couldn't remember whether they registered or not. I was able to fix that overnight but Thursday's shift was a little rough.
  
• I wish I had taken the time to set up a more sophisticated office space before the convention started. While we had enough space to work, better organization of our limited stationery supplies would have made life easier. Having an extra laptop preconfigured on the network and with printer drivers for whoever needed it would have been a good idea too.
  
• Opening up registration on Wednesday evening seriously took a huge load off Thursday's shift.
  
• The next person who is late bringing essential documents for the registration packets will be laughed at, then shot.
  
• Each night following a day of registration, I was up until 1:30 AM or so, catching up on data entry. There's got to be a better way.
  
• I never did get a chance to collect on all of those promised cocktails. There's got to be a better way.
  
• Despite a bewildering array of restaurants, I had only enough time to eat one meal per day. There's got to be a better way.
  
• I've only just today felt like I've caught up on my backlog of sleep. Yay for regaining normal energy levels without the assistance of massive quantities of sugar and caffeine! (And yeah, there has to be a better way.)
  
• At my (and others') insistence, we ordered only 800 metal water bottles to give away to registrants. That was quite reasonable when our pre-registrations totaled 720 people. As the at-the-door registrants surged past 800 however I began to get a little worried. Fortunately, not everyone picked up a water bottle so they stretched pretty far but we did run out.
  
• We have, oh, 100+ t-shirts still leftover. Our marketing guy ordered far too many. We still have some polo shirts left over but only in small and 2XL sizes: the sizes between went quickly. There were 1,000 souvenir pins but we ran out by the third day... wtf?! Sadly, we have to store the extras until we find a creative way of using the extras. Maybe we'll stitch together a zeppelin or something.
  
• Moron that I am, I neglected to pack multiple changes of shoes. I knew I wouldn't be dancing so I thought my most comfortable dress walking shoes would be enough. Doh! My feet and especially my right knee were killing me every hour of the convention.
  
• We had an executive suite at the hotel. It was beautiful but what kind of suite has a huge bar and no glasses! Having such a nice room was kind of a waste though since we didn't spend more than a few hours in it all weekend.
  
• Thank god for cell phone networks. The hotel gave us Nextel telephones for communicating between each other and the hotel staff but I preferred my own cell phone and the house phone in the office.
• Our big innovation --randomly assigning tables for the banquet and brunch-- was well received. To this moment, I haven't heard a single complaint but lots of compliments. In the past, a map of the tables in the dining hall was laid out and people were invited to peel a pre-printed label with their name from the lists and apply them to a seat at the table of their choice. Sadly, this has frequently resulted in a maddening and unseemly feeding frenzy as people struggled to locate their names and those of their friends, grab the lot and apply them to the best table they can find. In our method, people could assemble a table of friends but the location of the table would be randomly assigned later.
  
• My major freak-out moment of the weekend was related to the banquet tables. While checking out the table lists, I noticed they were 99% full but there were still 80+ names left for assignment. Even subtracting the folks who hadn't checked in yet, that was still far more than there were remaining seats. Juanita calmed me down in a moment though, pointing out that we had removed 10 tables from the pool for VIPs but hadn't removed the names from the lists since we didn't know who, say, the Chicago or Atlanta committees would be seating at their VIP tables. After consulting with the appropriate committees and boards, we rearranged some names and tables, suddenly making everything right. We did add two catch-all tables to the hall to offset any miscounts of banquet seats. In the end, all was well.
  
• The centerpieces for the banquet and brunch dining tables were lovely but there was nearly a disaster. A couple of the assembled pieces slid to one side, pushing the plastic bits up against the light causing it to start smoking. We nearly became remembered as the convention where the water sprinklers doused the everyone at the Saturday banquet. Well, no one would forget us.
  
• We briefly toyed with redoing the table locations for the brunch but thought that this might be pushing the experiment one step too far and would simply add another level of confusion and difficulty to the project.
  
• We had $10k worth of at-the-door registrations and walk-ins on Saturday alone. I still need to finish the data entry for the day rate folks but I'm estimating we had 890 people registered.
  
• I still need to finish the report to All Join Hands for the first-time attendees so we can get the promised reimbursement for their discounted registration. Hopefully, I can get that done tomorrow.
  
• Despite the struggle, I'm a little sad we can't do it all over again. 80% of the work was in the early planning, establishing of contacts, negotiating deals and so on before the actual convention. Now that we've done all of that, we could easily pull off a second convention with minimal pain. Alas, all of this work will be obsolete by the next time a window rolls around, 2015 at the earliest.
  
• I took not a single photo the entire weekend. There was simply no time.
  
• Being busy and productive is an addiction. The withdrawal has been a little distressing yesterday & today. I'll just have to tough it out doing more mundane things like curing cancer and solving third-world hunger.
  
• My dues are now paid: I'm off the convention planning hook for another 15 years or so.
  

I have much to write about the IAGSDC convention just completed but it will have to wait until I catch up on some work-related activities as well as some long overdue sleep. Suffice it to say however that I think it went pretty well.

Physically, I'm a bit of a wreck right now. :-) There was minimal sleep on every day of the convention as well as a few days prior, I have countless paper cuts and hand injuries, my feet are killing me even though I hardly danced a step and my right knee is demanding immediate medical attention. Still, it was worth every minute and I had a blast working on every part of this event.

My only wish is that I had more time to schmooze with friends & family as well as perhaps even dance during the past four days but I'll just have to work double-time on that at next year's Chicago convention.

Thanks to all who came to DC for the event, to all of our countless volunteers who pushed us along, to the committee members who sacrificed more than you'll ever know and to the fabulous hotel staff who pulled our fat out of the fire several times. All of us together are definitely more able, knowledgeable and powerful than any of us alone.

Another night of four hours' sleep. Gotta do better soon.

Morning at the registration desk was pretty rough as my scheduled volunteers didn't show. As best I could, I set up the desk while juggling a wave of dancers seeking their registration packets, directions or help in a variety of issues. In the middle of this, I still had to compile attendance statistics for the opening ceremonies only 2 hours later, then print the labels we needed for the banquet, brunch and fun badge tour seating.

I continued fading through the course of the day. It was a struggle to keep my head together long enough to compile the final banquet and brunch entree numbers (867 place settings) and pass the lot to the hotel management by 4 PM.

Once the numbers were given to the kitchen staff, I was largely off the hook for the rest of the day. The space to decompress was a welcome change. Indeed, the balance of my work will largely be centered around putting out fires as they come up rather than working registration issues. Oddly though, there are still 35 people who pre-registered but haven't collected their docs yet; I'm hopeful they simply had to work Friday and will be collecting their materials Saturday morning.

To sleep now, perchance to snore.