June Fair - Friday Thoughts.

[arontius]

.....Greetings All,

.....Last week I started wrapping my brain around and getting my thoughts recorded on what worked and what didn't for June Faire XXV. Same as then, those who were a witness to the event, please feel free to comment and add to my rambling start.

.....Also same as then, even if you weren't present, I'd still like your thoughts and ideas. I'm planning on using this information at our June Faire de-briefings this month as well as putting together something comprehensive for the Continuity Book which can be utilized by future June Faire Boards.

.....Friday is the big set-up day for June Faire, so I'm probably missing items that should be discussed. Let me know if you see any big ticket items I'm overlooking.

.....Warning: This is again rather rambling. My apologies. Let me know if you have any questions. I have again spared many by placing this behind an LJ Cut. :-)

…..Friday morning of June Faire – Random Thoughts

…..First thing on Friday the sign coordinator, THL Barnet, was out placing signs before 8AM. He took care of signs on the main highways and internal signs (Marketplace, ‘No Entry’, etc.). We still had signs left over which really could have been utilized for other things. Having a sign coordinator is a good thing for an event, but it must be followed up with a plan from the Chairman as to what signs will be needed and where they will be located. I should have empowered the Sign Coordinator to go and find this out on his own. Would have been more effective and one less headache.

…..Port Gamble started placing signs and cones first thing in the morning. They were all over the placement of these things. We could have used a few more signs. But over all what we had was pretty effective. In the future, the JFBoD should actually sit down for a little bit with the town to discuss sign placement in detail. There was discussion, but there was a little misunderstandings on what would go where. Nothing that caused grief. But we could have used more signage on certain roads where we didn’t want people traveling or parking.

…..Even though we were scheduled to open at 10AM, people started lining up at the gate at 8AM. That’s pretty typical thinking back to past June Faires. If we stated an opening time of 8AM, I bet that people would start lining up at 6AM. It is the nature of June Faire. The problem with this is that it does not take long at all to fill up the available space with cars lined up and ready to enter site. When the space is filled, do we let them line up on the sides of the HWY? I don’t think that would work at all. The only solution (which really isn’t much of a solution), is to advertise the heck out of a starting time and state that we do not want people on site earlier then that time. You’ll still get early arrivals, but maybe it’ll cause a few people to hold off a bit.

…..Gate should be prepared to roll very first thing in the morning. Which means you need VOLUNTEERS. Gate suffered horribly, as usual, from lack of volunteers. What needs to happen is that the Gate Coordinator needs to start aggressively seeking volunteer commitments as soon as possible when he/she is named to the Board. Do not wait for the Volunteer Coordinator or others to fill time slots. At July Coronation in 2006, Lady Xian was rather effective with her volunteer recruitment (even though she still ran herself ragged). You could see a difference between the two events.

…..I still think that an overall Volunteer Coordinator is still a good idea for a large event. Especially if they are dedicated almost solely to that job. They could actively recruit volunteers before the event. Keep the awareness level of the need for volunteers high. And then be prepared at the event itself to go from camp to camp and work hard and gaining more volunteers for the event. Mistress Gwenllyn worked hard at raising the awareness level for June Faire, but she had some things working against her. She was recruited late herself. She had other activities to which she was dedicated at the event. And other things.

…..Gate on Friday ran rather smoothly, even with a lack of volunteers. What this meant was that Lord Isketol and Lady Xian spent far more hours at gate than they actually should have. But traffic never extended out into the highway and slowed the regular commute.

…..Having multiple lanes on the north-south entrance worked and is actually preferable than running gate through the town. Running through town has the potential to block business traffic, which causes complaints on the part of the town businesses. But it is always an option in case the usual entrance backs up.

…..Gate had a written strategy on how to deal with traffic. But how to deal with the funds generated was not so concrete. We need to develop a system that is more streamlined so that no one person is saddled with the responsibility of being responsible for collecting and dealing with the funds. But a system that does not allow for too many hands to touch the funds. Maybe, in addition to the ‘Gate Exchequer’, you need an additional person whose sole job is to get the money counted with the Exchequer, accounted and deposited on Friday and Saturday. That way the Exchequer could concentrate on his/her job of dealing with the organization of funds, roster sheets and the NMS issues.

…..Need more education on gate. The people running the gate need to have a clear, uniform, vision for how the system will work so that when people ask them questions, those questions can be answered without thought. This will help to reduce the number of ‘different systems’ employed at gate. Will also help with the quick education of volunteers who do not normally deal with gate or funds. If the system used at gate can be streamlined to a five to ten minute discussion, volunteers could be quickly educated up front with less ‘learn on the go’ and the problems associated with this method, such as different prices being charged to the same types of people.

…..Having a very large poster at gate that clearly defines any and all charges involved with entering gate is a good idea. It helps to have something at which to quickly look at the various fees. It also helps to have this structure on a sheet for each notebook used at gate.

…..The roster sheets always seem to become a mess at gate. Volunteers end up having them filled out in various different ways. Some of which make the Exchequer have to guess whether or not the person is a member or not, whether they are a youth or not, etc. Streamlined process and education will help with this.

…..Site security needed more volunteers. We could have used someone else monitoring the road next to the old Automotive Repair station. People ended up parking there for the weekend, some of which could have been avoided with the use of a monitor in that area. The site security coordinator needs to be named early and start recruiting volunteers early. Four sets of volunteers are needed on a rotating basis. Which means, optimally, a minimum of eight people for all day Friday and at least a part of the day on Saturday. The volunteer force utilized this year worked hard and did a good job with what they had.

…..Something that we utilized this year was a ‘Car Coordinator’. Their sole function was to wander the site from camp set-up to camp set-up and politely ask people to remove their cars when they were completed with their unloading. Arion the Wanderer started doing that and then had another take his place later in the evening. It seemed to make a difference as we had fewer problems with getting rid of cars. The heavy advertising prior to the event may have helped a little as well. Most people knew that we were serious about getting cars off of the grass and into parking. We even came close to asking the town to tow away a car or two over the weekend. Thankfully it never came to that. But this is an option that, even though it should be a very last resort, should always be available and used as necessary.

…..Most of the Port Gamble residents are either used to the disruption of an event on site, or else they leave for the weekend. However, we invariably have at least a couple of incidents involving the town residents. This year we had two sets of incidents. The first involved the new managers of the Bed-And-Breakfasts over on the Northwest Corner of the site. They were quite anxious that June Faire was getting too close to their business and were insistent that campers be moved back. We were prepared for this and ensured that our liaison with Olympic Resources, Tom, physically showed us our line of demarcation between the event and the B&B. The owner continued to complain, but we had very few problems on our end because we ensured that we had the town on our side.

…..The other resident with whom we had problems was the family that lived in the house by the dumpster at the end of the road on the west end. They were rather upset with people interfering with their access to their house, use of the water, and how close people camped. We were able to mollify them for the most part by listening to their complaints, basically letting them ‘vent’ to us about the disruption June Faire causes on their lives. It seemed to work for the most part as they stopped complaining and actually joined in the fun throughout the weekend.

…..The town hired the North Kitsap Band Boosters to provide parking coordination over the weekend. On Friday we had them on site from 4-8PM. In retrospect it would have been better to have had them from 6-10PM. They started the cars off in a very organized fashion that squeezed quite a few in a smallish amount of space. But when they left at 8PM, people started making their own rules on how to park and some space was wasted. We even had a few cars blocked in, which is pretty typical for June Faire. But I think that this can be reduced even further by having the Parking group stay a little later as the bulk of cars seem to get parked around dusk, at 9PM, as people finish setting up encampments.

…..Mistress Lenora volunteered the use of her car to shuttle people up the hill from the parking lot on Friday. This was very much appreciated by the people who utilized it. Future teams should give more thought towards planning for this function earlier in the planning process so as to have someone (or several people) ready to take this on, even if June Faire actually rents a vehicle for this purpose.

…..Handicapped parking was an issue for those attending the event. We were able to save a number of spaces by guaranteeing a ride from their car to their encampment whenever needed. This is one area where the rented golf cart really came in handy for the event. I spoke with the town about utilizing the grassy area at the west edge of town, near the highway, for handicapped parking. The town was reluctant as past experience has shown, if some people see cars parking there it will be a clear invitation for others to avoid the parking fee in the mill yard by parking in this area. If more signage is utilized and a set of dedicated volunteers (two would work) was used to monitor this area, I think that it would be a good area for handicapped parking for those staying the weekend. This worked well at July Coronation in 2006. An option that should be explored for June Faire.

…..The Camping Coordinators for June Faire were awesome as usual. There were a few hiccups, but that can be expected for an event the size of June Faire. The one hiccup that should be mentioned was the Baronial Encampment. There was some confusion as to Their Excellencies Retinue and general Baronial Camping. The retinue needed to be close in to Their Excellencies due to the workload of support over the weekend. The surrounding encampment needs a little additional planning to ensure that there are entries / exits from the area. Having a huge area blocked out as ‘Dragon’s Laire’ did not work so well. It needs a little more organization and smaller chunks of real estate.

…..The mapping efforts of the Camping Coordinators were awesome as well. I heard many, many compliments at being able to go to Google Earth and seeing the exact lay-out of camping at June Faire. Everyone involved appreciated being able to do this. If available, this should be utilized in the future.

…..The Camping Coordinators have been doing this job for several years now. It is time for them to train others to take on this responsibility to ensure, if nothing else, that if something should happen and the usual team is not available, that someone else could do the job as efficiently and as completely. I encourage next year’s team have a new team named and have this year’s team ‘look over their shoulder’ so that the best process is utilized and others learn that process.

…..Hilltop coordination has a little chaotic at times. It always will be to some extent. But we should have walked out placement beforehand more than we did. We should have also laid out physical lines prior to the event. It would have helped avoid the churn and shuffle that happened at June Faire. There will always be last-minute changes. But last minute changes affect others on the hilltop (merchants, ercs, support pavilions), the less churn you have the easier for all.

.....Have a good week all! :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.

Comments

[ornerie.livejournal.com]

I heard there was some last minute scrambling for a copy of the equestrian insurance cert (the marshal is required, on pain of getting his card yanked and the kingdom program on probation blah blah blah ;) to have a copy of the cert in his hand and sent to the kingdom officer)

what could we have done to help this have happened BEFORE the event rather than Sat morning? in theory, if we had had horses on site for the weekend, they would not have been allowed out of their trailers until that had been done...as it is, it worked ok but I'd like to have some ideas on how to streamline that for next year?

thanks :)

Insurance Question.

[arontius]

.....This was something I was going to address on the Saturday missive, but can definitely easily answer now. :-) This was a disconnect between myself and Tsuruko Sensei. On regular insurance, the SCA FAX'ed the statement to the owner direct and the autocrat does not get involved in the process. My assumption was that the same applied to the Equestrian Insurance. When I was told that it was FAX'ed to Port Gamble, I assumed that my part was done and told Tsuruko so (not telling her that I didn't have a piece of paper in my hands). I did not know that the Equestrians needed an actual physical copy, in their own hands, in order to hold Equestrian Activities. I asked around and found out that a lot of Autocrats did not know this. I think that just a little education is in order to ensure that this becomes general knowledge. For our part in Dragon's Laire, this is now common knowledge and this mistake should be avoided in the future. :-)

.....Arontius. :-)

[corbaegirl.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware or either handicapped parking or a shuttle from the parking area (I got on site about 4 pm Fri.) Parking in regular parking wasn't a problem, but walking all the way back up became one for me. No complaints, but next year I'll definitely be looking for a shuttle.

I am very grateful for the help I recieved to unload my car. I would have had to wait until the rest of my encampment got there (about 7) to get the heavy stuff out without it.

[parlor-games.livejournal.com]

I think a sign explaining fees, etc. should be at the gate and ALSO at entrance to "downtown" Port Gamble, so people know before they head down the hill and can opt to leave instead.