[TheForge] "Official" news from ABANA

[Peter Fels And Phoebe Palmer]

Bruce:
I think it's a question of scale. If you have 1500 folks and 3 
demonstrators, most folks won't get to see much or hear much of 
anything.
If you have a large number of folks and a proportionate number of 
differing demonstrators, then, ideally , everybody has a chance 
to learn something new that addresses their specific interest and 
skill level.
To my eye, that's the lure and virtue of the big Abana conferences.
Paying skilled demonstrators is a reasonable practice...and , to 
an extent, you get what you pay for.
I don't go to a conference for the party, though i enjoy my time 
there.
I go to conferences to learn new things, to change the way i look 
at metal.
If i'm not furiously building new tools in my head, conjuring up 
new projects, applying what i learned to old metalworking 
problems ...all through the long drive home.....The conference 
was a failure, so far as i'm concerned.
If i don't anticipate that that'll happen...i figure i can't 
afford to go.
I'm a full timer, don't make much money and enjoy a lot of 
creative freedom as the trade off. The $1000 conf is way out of 
reach.
The first ABANA conference i went to ( San Luis Obispo, 
CA)changed my metalworking life profoundly.
While it's been diminishing returns since then, the conferences 
are still usually worthwhile...
Except when i get stuck demonstrating. Then i lose time , money 
and the odd tool, dont get to see the other demonstrators and 
generally embarass myself.
The pay i'm offered covers costs generally and allows me the 
opportunity to be a fool...
It keeps me a bit humbler, which is valuable, to be sure.
Then there's Bruce's "channel hopping"...which i call "demo 
surfing". When one demo is covering something you already know, 
having other demos to look in on is literally worthwhile.
I'd propose that there's a conference size range that benefits 
from economys of scale and choice without requiring massive 
committments , huge chunks of people's lives, and rigidifying 
institutional strictures.
Perhaps there needs to be more frequent , smaller ABANA 
conferences scattered across the country. Bifurcate ABANA?
Dunno...just seems to have become too large and institutionalized 
for my taste....pete f

Bruce Freeman wrote:
> Bill,
> I may be missing something pretty basic here, but what
> advantage is it to have more than two demos going on
> at once?  With two,  you have a choice, and even that
> can be frustrating.  I'm remembering a PABA meeting a
> few years back that had two magnificent demonstrators
> -- and I could only "channel hop"!
>>From my own experience, and from reports here from
> others, a major problem at ABANA conferences is even
> figuring out who is doing what, when.  I missed  some
> demos I'd have like to have seen at the 1998
> conference because the schedules were so hard to
> interpret.  (It is not easy to draw up an
> easy-to-interpret schedule, so I'm not faulting the
> folks who drew these up.)
> So, what I'm wondering is what is the advantage of
> having, say, six demos at a time?
> Bruce
> NJ
> 
> --- Hochewa at aol.com wrote:
> <snip>
>> No other confrence I have been to comes within an
>> order of magnitude  of an 
>> ABANA conference.  There are many reasons why this
>> is so.   Just the scale of 
>> an ABANA conference sets them apart.  Most regional,
>>  state or local events are 
>> day trips (with exceptions), most have maybe two
>> demos  going on at the same 
>> time, most have four demonstors over two days, 
> <snip>
> 
> 
>  
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