I wrote an article for the next issue of On One Wheel, asking people to let
us know what they like or don’t like about our conventions. I don’t want to
wait for that to get printed, mailed, and read by everyone, so I’m letting
all of you see it first. What do y’all think about the way we do
conventions? Read this and respond:
FUTURE USA CONVENTIONS
by John Foss, your outgoing USA President
If you attended the excellently-run conventions this summer in Washington,
you may have some opinions about what you’d like to see, or do, or not have
to experience at future conventions. But we usually don’t hear much from
most of our members, except at the conventions themselves, when it’s too
late to do anything about it. We’d like to hear from you now.
The USA has a Rules Committee that works on our competition rules. But this
process generally does not determine the basic nuts and bolts of the
convention. It only works with the rules for the competition events, and has
little effect on the rest of your convention experience. In any case, we
still welcome new members to the USA Rules Committee. You can see what we do
here: www.unicycling.org/usa/committee/
But what about the overall convention? Would you like to see more of some
things, or less of others? Perhaps it is time to make some changes. At the
moment, we do not have a host scheduled for our 2003 convention. These
events are hard to put together. Are they too hard? Should we perhaps do
something to make it easier?
Examples:
- So much time is taken up by competition that there’s never enough time for
workshops or other non-competitive events - It’s the North American championships, and yet beginner and beginner-level
riders are doing artistic competitions at beginner levels, which takes up a
lot of time - Level One riders are entering Standard Skill, and winning awards
- Racing takes up two whole days or nearly that
- Awards ceremonies, even when minimized, are deadly boring
Here’s an example of my own. Based on the competition result information at
www.nwcue.org, there were 291 competitors at this summer’s USA Convention.
For each racing event with the full range of age groups (such as the 100m),
there were 110 age group medals and ribbons, plus another 10 Expert medals
and ribbons. That’s 120 awards each for the 100m, 400m, 800/1500 as a unit,
Backward Slow, Forward Slow, High Jump, Long Jump, Obstacle Course, and Walk
the Wheel (10m and 30m as a unit). Plus another 120 awards for Racing Point
Total awards. That’s 1200 awards, just for racing. And this was a “minimal”
convention, in that many events that would normally be included were saved
for UNICON.
1200 racing awards. Add to that another approximately 340 awards for the
artistic events. Actually there are many more, because each rider in a club
or group gets one. To allow for that we can figure a conservative 10 riders
each for Club Show, and add another 50. The 340 assumes a minimal three
riders each in Group Freestyle. This gives us a grand total of 1590 awards.
Granted, not all of these awards are given out, because some age groups are
not full. In fact, this year, like most years, some age groups only had one
rider in them. What kind of competition is that? But regardless, the hosts
had to purchase all those awards, because they must be ordered in advance.
And with numbers like those, the costs add up fast.
1590 divided by 291? Roughly 5 and a half. This means that on average,
people attending the relatively bare-bones 2002 NAUCC went home with 5.5
ribbons, medals, and a few trophies. Is this excessive for a North American
championship? People are of wildly various opinions on that, though this
average is perhaps the lowest it’s been since the 1980s due to the smaller
number of events.
It’s good to have events to encourage young and beginning riders. I would
not do away with that. But should we treat it more like a championship
event, perhaps by having fewer events with all those age groups? This would
not only lower the cost of the convention, it would allow more time to do
other events such as workshops, group rides, games, etc.
What do you think? Please let us know. You can write to the USA P.O. Box
(40534, Redford, MI, 48240), or send e-mail to usa-discuss@unicycling.org,
where interested volunteers can see it. We can’t make the changes you want
until we know what they are!
Stay on top,
John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone
jfoss@unicycling.com