Academy

[cellio]

Today the local SCA group hosted the Academy, a (roughly) semi-annual event consisting mainly of classes. (The event rotates around the kingdom; we don't hold it locally that often.) It went pretty well. The event was held at CMU, which is no more than a mile from my synagogue, so I just walked there after services. It turned out that I beat Dani there by 15 or 20 minutes and he had my garb, but a friend had a spare tunic I could throw on until he got there so that was fine.

Some classes that I wanted to take were cancelled due to instructors not being able to make it at the last minute. Oh well. I did get to take a nifty class on making cheese; Broom (there's more to his name, but that's what eeryone calls him) is an entertaining teacher.

Tofi, who moved to LA a few months ago, came back for this event, so it was nice to be able to spend time chatting with him. He seems to be happy with his new job, and they managed to sell their house here pretty quickly.

There was an "ask the laurel" table set up at the event. This sort of thing is an open invitation to wacky questions and there were some of those, but it was all in good fun. More importantly, there did actually seem to be some useful exchanges of information and advice, so that's good. I don't know how much, but hey -- it gave people a place to hang out and gab, and that's not bad. :-)

As a pleasant change of pace, admission to this event was free (you had to pay to eat, which is appropriate), so there was no offensive corporate tax. So I made a point of supporting the event; I volunteered for the clean-up crew (which turned out to be an easier job than I expected) and also volunteered to do advance cooking, though the latter wasn't needed. I'd like to see my group do more free events.

Comments

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see my group do more free events.

Atlantian University has been "free" -- I usually call such events donation-only myself -- for eleven years. (And if you do the math, you'll have a pretty good idea why the then University Chancellor announced the policy...)

I'd like to see more donation-only events around here, too. The biggest hurdle seems to be finding a site whose fee is low enough that the group can afford to eat a large chunk of it if almost nobody donates.

Our barony put in a bid to host Unevent (the Atlantian Annual Business Meeting, a day of officer meetings, order meetings, and general schmoozing), which is donation-only. If we get the bid, we could lose up to $1000 on the event! But it may be worth it to us NOT to have to drive to North or South Carolina for it.

College groups seem to have an easier time putting on donation-only events since they can often get campus sites cheap (or even free).

[cellio]

This event was held at a university, which was either free or very cheap. That certainly helped. But we've also had events at relatively cheap sites that were not free or donation-funded, because either the autocrat is pro-tax or people just did "what we always do" without thinking. I'm not going to go to every officers' meeting to sound this particular horn whenever an event is bid; if I'm the only one who cares to ask the question then we're doomed anyway. It might take a fundamental procedural change, such as explicitly considering the equestion on every event bid before acceptance, for it to catch on. I don't know.

One of the sites we often use (and will be using next month) costs about $200; our other regular site is around $400. And we've also used more expensive ones. While I can see people being catious about the more expensive ones, I think we would not lose money if we took a gamble on one of the events at the $200 site. What's particularly offensive is when we have events where the site fee is lower than the tax that's collected on it; that, to me, says we're doing something wrong.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I'm envious. Sites as cheap as $400 are scarce as hen's teeth around here.

What's particularly offensive is when we have events where the site fee is lower than the tax that's collected on it

That would SERIOUSLY cheese me off -- fercrissake, if the site fee is under $3 per capita, just ask for a bloody donation, you'll likely get *more* money that way!!!