At 09:49 PM 5/22/00 -0700, Debbie Cunningham wrote:
>Jeremy, I think your response was very thoughtful and diplomatic and I agree
>with what you are saying. Are suggestions unwelcome if the one making the
>suggestion is unable to do the "90%" of the work required to implement the
>idea? If so, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. In this day and
>age, people get paid big money for using their head . That is as it should
>be. The unfortunate part of this equation is that those who volunteer to
>run these events do not get paid. That does not make the ideas any less
>valuable.
>
> I don't feel that people resenting those who do not do "as much work" as
>they do is a reason for people with good ideas and no means (ie., time) to
>implement them to be summarily dismissed and chastised for being forward
>thinking enough to suggest them.
Jeremy made some good suggestions, but the reality of the situation is that
unless someone steps up and volunteers to put them in place, they aren't
going to happen. The base of people who jump up to do everything are
already overtaxed. For example, we need 36 event chairs to run our 18
regular season events. Subtracting the events that are already past, and
the events with chairs already listed on the web site, we need 23 more
people to chair events. Not very many compared to the 244 people that
we've been averaging per event, yet we still have events on the list where
no one has volunteered to chair. Considering how fundamental this is to
our program (remember folks - no chair, no event. It's as simple as
that.), it's pretty discouraging to see what a hard time we're having
recruiting event chairs.
Jeremy made the suggestion to number the worker station, and assign people
to specific stations. Good idea - Sac Chapter and AAS do this fairly
successfully. However, one of the Sac Chapter members made signs for each
worker station - who in SFR is going to step up and do that? Jeremy
mentioned different colored cones with numbers on them - who is going to
step up and get these cones and put the numbers on them?
Jeremy also made a good suggestion for a rookie orientation
meeting. However, we need someone to make it happen. The event chairs
can't be the ones to hold the orientation meeting - before people start
running in the morning is the busiest time of the day for event
chairs. So, we need someone to give the spiel. To do it right, we
probably need someone to keep a schedule and make sure that we have a
spieler at every event. Make that two spielers - we probably need a rookie
orientation for the morning run groups, and the afternoon run
groups. Jeremy offered to do the spiel whenever he's running in the
morning - that takes care of the morning session for about half the events,
which is about 1/4 of the job. So, who's going to step up and take the
other 3/4 of that job? And, if it ends up to be more than one extra
person, who's going to coordinate this to make sure that we have all the
orientations covered? Who's going to find a last minute substitute when
something unexpected happens and the spieler is unable to make the
event? Looking once again at what he wrote, I may have misinterpreted his
idea - it looks like he's proposing having a newbie meeting before the
event at a separate venue. If so, then someone has to arrange a meeting
place, put out the word, and then give the orientation. Once again, who is
this person?
As I said before, these are good ideas. However, they are useless unless
someone steps up and makes them happen. Are you willing to step up to the
plate and take a swing at it? Is Jeremy? Someone else? Until that
happens, it's nothing more than heckling from the cheap seats...
Jim Ochi
jochi@liquidaudio.com
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