[MR] The importance of pre-reg

[Sean D. Sorrentino]

----- Original Message ----



> Gorm, an excellent reply, but there seems to be some issues with your 
> logic, at least given how every event I have been involved with (extreme 
> northern atlantia & AEthelmearc (way back when)) are run

this all makes sense to me. when Autocrats discuss Pre-Registration, they always seem to be concerned about that time between when all the money has been spent (or at least contracted to be spent) and that time when the money starts to roll in. they are sitting on a mountain of debt and are nervous about whether or not the income will arrive soon. in that period of uncertanty, it is easy to start sounding more than a bit strident when asking for pre-registration. since no-one i know plans on going to any events more than a month ahead of time (unless it is a BIG deal event) how could preregistration numbers have any affect at all on planning the events? 

from my point of view, unless i need to be guaranteed a spot On-Board, i'll pay you when i arrive. i cannot speak for anyone else in this, but since Autocrats keep complaining about the lack of Pre-Registrations, i imagine that most people feel the same way.

the problem of getting enough warm, paying bodies in the gate at an event is a marketing problem. the reason that War of the Wings got 650 people was likely that two fairly large Baronies combined to have an event, along with several people that seemed to exist only to publicize all the fine activities that would be going on at the event. i think that it was a bit overdone, but one cannot argue too much with success. 

generally the reason that some events are small is the fact that no one knows about them. being in the Acorn is not really a help. i stopped reading the Acorn a long time ago. i still get it though. for some strange reason the rules of our orgainization insist that in order to be any kind of officer at all you have to get a completely superflous paper Acorn. (me as an officer, yeah, i know. but fighting in Crown counts) about the only thing Acorns are useful for is causing arguments on the list about when they are received. 

the only reason someone will show up at your random event is if they either are told about it, or for some reason they happen to be bored enough that they start surfing the Kingdom calendar for something to do on a particular free weekend. you know the scenario. the wife, or girlfriend asks, 
"hey, what are we doing at this random weekend?" 

"nothing," says you, since like almost everyone else in the world, you think no further ahead than friday, quitting time at work. 

"Is there an event we could go to?" she asks.  

so you surf over to www.atlantia.sca.org where you see on the calendar that there is some vaguely interesting sounding event somewhere within driving distance. so you show up at said random event and have fun. 

having been in the SCA about 15 years at this point, i can say with authority that this is fairly typical of the people i know. now you personally (the reader) may be different, but quite a few people go through their entire lives like this. i personally think that having something planned for every weekend till 2009 is a bit strange. for some reason, those who plan their weekends far in advance, and those who Autocrat most of our events are the mostly the same people. maybe that is why they react with confusion when told by average, non-autocrat SCAdians, that we don't plan that far ahead. i think that this, in the end, is the source of our Pre-Registration issue. those who have the mental outlook to carry out the planing involved in an event cannot imagine that someone would NOT know 6 weeks ahead of time which event they were going to attend. 

whoever it was that was in charge of publicity of WoW apparently understood that in order to deal with this, it was necessary to make sure that not a day went by in those 6 weeks that potential guests did not hear about all the fun that would be had there. 

i cannot offer any suggestions to increase pre-registration. frankly, i don't see any adantages to pre-registration for the regular event attendee. i will say that showing up and then complaining at an event is pretty low class though. 

Respectfully,
Domenico