[Cynnabar] Generalist Events vs. Niche Events or Opening the Can of Worms
Monique Rio
mrio at umich.edu
Thu Sep 15 21:24:06 UTC 2011
I totally agree with Aaron. I also like the suggested donation idea.
A few things to add:
1) With only two niche events, it's not crazy to expect everyone to
pay. They're spaced 6 months apart, no one feels overworked. Now we're
adding two more, Fiber Fair and Cecilia Day. (Fiber Fair is free this
year, but if it's an annual thing I imagine eventually there'll have
to be some gate fee.) At some point people are going to say "Do I want
to pay to help support someone else's hobby or should I spend my
time/money elsewhere." At some point people get tapped out.
2) I mentioned this earlier, but I'll say it again:
Comping/Discounting the Entrance Fee for volunteers is the NORM in
many groups. The amount that gate would have to go up for everyone
else probably wouldn't be as much as you might think. Maybe not all. I
mean, how much profit did we make at Grand Tourney last year? And even
when volunteers are comped, people who have paid the full price chip
in at tear-down.
3) Teaching is volunteering. It's fun. It's also work. The fact that
in general the SCA doesn't recognize teachers through some kind of
discount (in effect making them pay to teach) doesn't make it right.
-Jadzia
On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Aaron Elkiss <aelkiss at umich.edu> wrote:
> It is fun; it's also a lot of work. (So is my day job.) I also like to
> dance, but I rarely get to do that at Terpsichore. I am not a
> professional musician, but even so I have many opportunities to
> perform and receive at least a token payment to cover transportation
> expenses. It's also the norm in every dance group (including our
> Society) to recognize that the musicians are providing a service and
> ought to be appropriately recognized. There are many who would say
> that it is fundamentally disrespectful to ask a musician to pay in
> order to be allowed to perform. That's why I had originally asked that
> musicians at Terp be comped -- it makes it much easier to recruit
> non-SCA musicians. (Jadzia and I usually pay anyway, because we want
> to support the Barony; if we stopped comping musicians we would likely
> just pay the site fee for some of our musicians.)
>
> With the current structure, it's hard to decouple the idea of "we're
> all pitching in to do what we like to do" from making it feel like
> we're being required to pay in order to volunteer our time. It's part
> of why I like the "suggested donation" -- it means that we can all
> give a donation because we want to support what we are doing without
> feeling like we're being required to pay to perform, sit at gate, or
> prepare a feast.
>
> -a
>
> On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:53 PM, Charles J. Cohen
> <charles at eecs.umich.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I have a Terp specific question: is it fun to be a musician at Terp?
>>
>> - Midair
>>
>> p.s. I realize fun is hard to define. I have fun sitting at gate. The
>> fun comes from being a greeter, hanging out with other people at gate,
>> and also from serving the barony. So I can easily imagine musicians
>> traveling a quite a distance to serve and pay a site fee to perform in
>> the evening. I can also see some of them seeing it as a chore. Hence the
>> question.
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