Stand By For Action

A big "thank you" to everyone who attended Stand By For Action last weekend. Overall the weekend was a success, in as much as the delegates expressed their happiness (either in person or via the questionnaire) and we have since received many letters and e-mails from delegates and guests alike.

Of course, there are always opportunities to improve, so I hope that everyone who has identified our shortcomings has taken the trouble to write them on the questionnaires to ensure they are taken into account should we opt to stage another convention in the future. However, a few points have been raised on this YahooGroup which I'd like to take the opportunity of clarifying now:

PUBLISHING THE PROGRAMME IN ADVANCE
Anyone who's run a convention will know just how hard it is to plan the schedule to try and make everything fit together. Whatever you do you'll upsetsomeone (unless you have just a single room with a linear programme). Publishing a schedule in advance would only raise expectations even higher, leaving us with an even greater problem when people arrive to find things havealready changed. Additionally, as we never pay our guests an appearance fee it is really up to them when they are able to join us and, unfortunately,leave us. As Katie Bleathman (a convention go-er and organiser for more years than I (or she!) cares to remember) said, you have to make choices between the various parts of the programme.

I think it's a little unfair to say that the "schedule eventually bore little resemblance to the one originally published". Some items over-ran, and the decision was made to change the schedule. For example, Alan Shubrook's presentation was so interesting and well received that it ran for an extra hour - was the convention less enjoyable as a result?!

AUTOGRAPHS
We got a lot of stick at "Century 21" for the way the autograph panels werearranged. Not only from those who stood in line for over two hours, but from the guests who had to sign for two hours! It made more sense to arrange the panels throughout the day to give the guests time to enjoy themselves, and give everyone the opportunity to get the autographs they wanted.

I think I should also clarify that the money collected in the autograph sessions were donations to our charity - DiabetesUK - and not "charges" going to Fanderson or anybody else. Happily I am able to report that these collections (and the raffle ticket sales) added around £800 to the fantastic sum raised in the auction. This policy also deterred some people from monopolising the guests when there were huge queues behind them, as had been the case at "Century 21".

FANDERSON SALES
No-one was more sorry for the slow service at the Fanderson Sales table than Stephen, Lynn, Dave and John who carried on through the sweltering heat from near 10 hours non-stop, and (despite the best of plans) ended up seeingvirtually nothing of the convention themselves.

THE CAFE SERVICE
There were times when the hotel decided to close the cafe area earlier thanI had arranged with them. As soon as this was pointed out to me (which wasonly once (and that was a fellow committee member who had just come off stage gasping for a drink)) I immediately got the hotel to open it again. If you didn't tell me there was a problem, how could I be expected to put it right?  

MEETING UP WITH PEOPLE
As with "Century 21" we offered space in the schedule for local and/or e-mail groups to meet up. The Supercar group took us up on the offer, but no-one else did which is a shame as you'd all have had a chance to meet each other and put faces to names! This will probably be offered should we opt to stage another convention, so please bear it in mind.

If anyone has further comments (positive or negative) about the convention I will (as always) be compiling a post-convention report which includes theaccounts, feedback from the questionnaires and other mail. I cannot spare the time to be trawling through the YahooGroups for every individual comment, but please feel free to submit any comments to me at [hidden email]. I firmly believe all constructive feedback is valuable, so be honest! Please also remember that the author of a review of the convention publishedin the FABReview section of the club's magazine will get a free year's membership to the club. Again, we're not expecting a wholly-positive review (otherwise we'd have written one ourselves!) but one that balances all the good with the bad points.

Thanks for your time.

Nick Williams
Stand By For Action chairman


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]