[TheForge] ABANA and Conferences

[Saint Phlip]

In a lot of ways, there are a lot of similarities between ABANA and
another organization I belong to, the SCA. I'm wondering if ABANA
might be better off to take SCA's approach to large events, and
essentially back off from hands on management.

Our events in SCA tend to be much larger than ABANA events, and what
has worked for us is that we have a large number of "local" events,
some of which attract people from around the world. In concept, the
sponsoring group finds a place for the event, arranges everything
necessary with the site, and holds the event. The only thing SCA Inc
does is provide general guidelines which make it an SCA event, rather
than any other sort of event, and provides the insurance.

As an example, when I was up for the conference in Seattle, I wouldn't
have been able to afford everything if I hadn't been working up there
and had a place to stay. An SCA event I attended on another weekend up
there lasted from Friday to Sunday, attracted as many people as the
ABANA event, and site fee was $15.

For our biggest SCA event (which, incidently, attracts quite a few
blacksmiths), the Pennsic War will cost between $120 to $155
(depending on membership status and pre-registration, etc) for just
over two weeks, for (roughly) 13,000 attendees. This one is large
enough that it is run by 3 regional groups working in coordination,
and SCA, Inc has very little to do with it.

Clare, you're not very far from me, just down in Philly. If you like,
I'll get you in contact with some of the people in SCA who manage our
events, and would be happy to have you go to a local event as my
guest, if you'd like to see what and how we do things. I'm working
right now on setting up a mini hammer in (as ABANA would call it) at
an SCA event on 6/1-6/3 in Williamstown, NJ.

http://www.eastkingdom.org/event-detail.html?eid=1340

It might give you some perspective on what we do, and how it might
best be applied to ABANA events.

Philippa Alderton
Canterbury, CT

-- 
Saint Phlip

Heat it up
Hit it hard
Repent as necessary.

Priorities:

It's the smith who makes the tools, not the tools who make the smith.