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At this point I wonder what happens to clubs that put in a bid (not any of the ones that have been mentioned and/or held Cons before) and loses out? I distinctly remember a club in mid to Northern Calif had a good bid IMHO. They lost out to who I forget, but they never bid again.

Does losing out put that much of a bad taste in club's mouths that they won't try again?

Edited by Roktman
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Some do and some don't Kevin. It sort of depends on the circumstances they "lose" under. Go back a couple of pages and read my post that addresses this to get a more thorough explanation.

 

GIL :smiley16:

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And it's not just losing bids, it's certain things that can happen between the national organization and the host chapter(s) - I've heard from a couple of recent hosts that they're not going to hold the show any longer because of things that happened behind the scenes.

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This might bear looking into. If we could find 4-6 individuals willing to take this on for room/travel expenses, that would be great. I'm not sure about having two teams. That would mean one team would be bidding out/organizing a convention that the other group would have to pick up mid-stream and run.

 

Seems like a good start. One thing to think about from the beginning is how to keep the core committee staffed. People will burn out over time, so making it a "for life" position may not be a good idea, but you also want continuity on the committee and the ability to draw replacements from an experienced pool. Maybe each host chapter should appoint a "liaison" to work with their committee counterpart, that would create a pool of known candidates to draw from.

 

Don

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The idea of a "National" Convention committee sounds like it's well worth investigating. While my experience is limited to bidding on a Nats and being the Show Chairman for the Chattanooga show, I'd certainly be willing to participate. As for committee burn out, I do like the idea submitted earlier that there essentially be 2 teams who handle alternating shows. That should relieve some of the burden. Replacements should be continually recruited. If we were to end up with 3 teams as a result, I don't see any harm. I'm sure there would be some logistics to be worked out regarding hand offs but those should be surrmountable.

 

Mike

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Many hands make light work. And if the system becomes repeatable, it gets a lot easier. I know when we ran our first few local shows way back in the early 90s, they were a big hassle and a lot of work. By the time we got to our big annual regional events leading into the 2005 show, the shows were pretty easy, as we just did the same thing every year.

 

I absolutely believe this becomes the same situation with the National Convention. There will be some trying times the first couple of years, but after we work out the kinks it'll be a lot easier. And if we pull from the pool of past national coordinators, then it will be easy to spread the load over those "many hands."

 

In order to make this effective, we have to stop thinking about the current "bid" cycle, and start thinking about the shows as a continuum.

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At this point I wonder what happens to clubs that put in a bid (not any of the ones that have been mentioned and/or held Cons before) and loses out? I distinctly remember a club in mid to Northern Calif had a good bid IMHO. They lost out to who I forget, but they never bid again.

Does losing out put that much of a bad taste in club's mouths that they won't try again?

Business (and the Nats is a business) is largely about relationships, so if I were in a National leadership position I’d take the losing bidders out to dinner and have a sincere conversation about the bids and, assuming they had a strong bid, encourage them to not give up, to bid again in the future. There’s no reason for anyone to walk away from the process with a “bad taste in their mouths” as long as the bidding process is honest and the communication is open.

Then, in a couple of years, I’d reach out to them and ask if they’d be interested in putting another bid together and offer the organization’s help to make it a success.

In fairness to those in leadership positions today and in the past, maybe this has been done. I’m speaking only from a place of what my tendency would be.

Steven Brown

IPMS #48592

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Ron, you misinterpreted what I meant. One team, would would focus on each show for two years. For example: The Even team would run and present the show for 2018 (just a hypothetical) beginning their work after the conclusion of the 2016 show. This would be low intensity chores that set the stage for the 2018 event, things like sending feelers out to potential speakers, getting input for decal themes, etc. Then at the 2017 the Even team would be tasked with manning a table for the 2018 event, doing things like selling vendor tables, pushing the wares of the host city's convention bureau, etc. After the 2017 show, they would go into high gear getting ready for their own show the following summer. The Odd team would follow the same pattern a year later. This would let one team have most of a year to rest and recover while the other is working hard.

One team doing it all would lead to fast burnout, IMO, and would require new volunteers almost annually for at least one position. Managing a Nationals is extremely intense for about 2-4 weeks, moderately intense for 3-4 months and less so the rest of the time. Using a cookie cutter approach to run this would make that much easier if National "vets" were involved instead of potentially new people every year.

 

 

This might bear looking into. If we could find 4-6 individuals willing to take this on for room/travel expenses, that would be great. I'm not sure about having two teams. That would mean one team would be bidding out/organizing a convention that the other group would have to pick up mid-stream and run.

 

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Before this got any further, i thought I should check the CBLs to see if it was prohibited. It isn't specifically prohibited, and changes (if any) the EB decides to make can be easily handled through the National Convention Operating Parameters. There would be no reason for the Society to not accept "bids" from local chapters, as they would naturally form the nucleus of the labor pool we would have to draw upon during the show. They would also be responsible for the theme, venue selection, etc., just not the actual execution of the event. This alone might encourage some otherwise unwilling potential host chapters to bid as they would not have to worry as much about the manpower needed. perhaps the Facility Chairman & Logistic Chairman Ron mentioned should be from the host chapter as they would be on-site and able to handle things as they occur. ARTICLE 5 - MEETINGS Section 3. National Conventions

  1. A national convention should be held every year.
  2. The National Convention and Contest shall be conducted in compliance with the National Convention Operating Parameters set by the Executive Board and the National Contest Rules and Categories provided by the National Contest Committee.
  3. The procedure for selecting a location/host chapter for the National Convention will be determined by the Executive Board and will be communicated by the Second Vice President to all Chartered Chapters. At a minimum, this procedure should include the ability of the general membership to review each of the bids at a National Convention before the location is selected.

 

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Yeah, I wrote those specifically so our hands would not be tied if we wanted to change. Specific operating systems don't belong in such documents.

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If you talk through the roles that will help determine what is really needed.

 

For example, the contest coordinator is the local role that facilitates the communication between the Competition Committee, the judges and the results (Eileen) folks. If you've centralized the convention management, I honestly am not certain this role is needed. The contest is the ONE part of the show that runs pretty smoothly.

 

To truly plan this we need to talk through a typical nationals project plan, what happens when, and decide how each step would be impacted by this change. Once you have that, you'll have a better idea of what the volunteer requirements would be.

 

Again, this will be complicated and just like running a locally hosted national convention for the first couple of years, but then after you smooth process, the workload will go down.

 

Standing by!

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Gonna disagree, Paul. A contest coordinator will be needed. He determines the room lay out, makes sure it gets set up accurately, allocates the category spaces, runs the model registration system, re-allocates space and answers a myriad of questions during the show and then provides for the needs of the NCC and recorders. After the show, he maintains all the records of what was entered where. All that pre and post judging stuff has to be done by someone. True, some of it will become more routine, but if we change venues every year, that means a new lay out, etc. and that has to be done by someone.

 

I do agree with you that if we talk through this whole thing, some roles may change, but at this time, I can't see a situation where we would not need at least overall, registration, vender, contest and program chairmen. Each of those roles is a full time job for any show.

 

And remember, this right now is all theory and not a proposal. I don't want people to get expectations up and then feel we let them down when this idea doesn't come to fruition.

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I look forward to the local ambience and atmosphere associated with the National Convention. I hope that future conventions continue to have that "local" appeal that may go missing if a centralized committee were to be created.

I do not favor members of a future central committee getting a free ride to the convention.

I do not favor a central committee being given the power to run the convention with the locals serving as minions. This centralized committee arrangement may lead to the institutionalization of a person serving in a particular role year after year. All sorts of negatives come from such arrangements in the long run, and those negatives far outweigh any positives from such an arrangement.

 

While some bid cycles have seen only one or two bids, and some cycles have seen bids that come in very late in the cycle, no year has seen zero bids coming in, at least in "modern" history.

 

The problem isn't a lack of a national central committee....the problem is a lack of information about bid preparation and a lack of interest on the part of a local club due to the perceived work load or lack of understanding of the work load involved in bid prep. Both of these problems are easily addressed.

The 2nd VP is the person to whom questions about bid preparation can be addressed. Perhaps a higher profile on the website might lead local chapters toward the 2nd VP? Perhaps semi-annual or annual email reminders to that effect can be sent to the chapter contacts by the DLC or 2nd VP? Perhaps a reminder in the Journal, which provides the contact info for the 2nd VP can be printed in lieu of the Editor's column once a year?

 

The 2nd problem, that of a lack of understanding of the work load, can be addressed, once again, without resorting to a central committee. Perhaps a Tips Sheet could be made available that would take much of the mystery out of the process and offer a rather thorough description of what is involved. I know that if I were involved in a bid prep I'd contact the leadership of the teams that ran the last two or three conventions and solicit their advice. This kind of information can be documented and provided to the "bidding public".

 

I just don't see the need for a central committee. That would introduce problems that are best avoided and there are other workable solutions to the problems a central committee would be founded to handle.

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@ Ron - I agree about laying out the room, but as far as registration, I see that being required from a different area of coordination. Again, finding ways to standardize these processes is key. We're saying the same thing, just have different organization ideas.

 

@Dick - I'm sorry, but I very much disagree that all the problems are lack of understanding of bid preparation and coordination with the 2nd VP.

 

The problems that we're trying to overcome are not related to bidding, the problems are related to funding and manpower requirements. These are invasive on the local host at this point.

 

1. Bids can only happen two years ahead of time, when the planning cycle on some facilities are 5 years plus, it becomes difficult to get good dates. Plus, we end up being shoe horned in with other conventions running at the same time - see all the issues we had at Columbus with CCH and 31.

 

2. Local hosts cannot fund what they need because they cannot collect until after the previous convention passes. When paying deposits, they are required when contracting with further deposits required before the one year out mark. Often times, these are hard to make - even with the seed money that can come from IPMS. I recall this being an issue with deposits for the 2005 convention. We had to twist arms to make the dates work, but the one year funding horizon causes issues.

 

3. Legal establishment - local hosts should establish 501C3 status to make sure they're protected on the tax front. IPMS has this, local chapters don't. We spent a lot of money to get this done in Atlanta. Some other hosts have done it, others haven't. The list of liabilities from not being incorporated are long, especially for locals having to sign contracts worth tens of thousands.

 

4. Equipment rentals - if the equipment could be standardized, it would make things much smoother. Also is an unnecessary expense to have year in and year out.

 

5. Further standardization and training on registration processes - admittedly this one can be corrected either way, but each year, it feels like some of the local host folks have no idea how to process registrations, simple things like name tags are major headaches. This could be dramatically streamlined with more national oversight.

 

I'm not suggesting that we have one or two people take it over, nor had I ever said that it should be done as a way to get free travel and room nights for the show. However, if we spread the volunteering over all the folks that have experience, it does become more workable.

 

Maybe it's just a simple as the national office being wiling to put some funding into the show's infrastructure. Pay for a professional staff to run the show, if they can run something like the 31 show, then we'd be simple by comparison. All the registration, etc. could be drastically simplified.

 

Moving the convention around gives you the local flavor, having a local host should not impact local flavor in any way.

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The problem isn't a lack of a national central committee....the problem is a lack of information about bid preparation and a lack of interest on the part of a local club due to the perceived work load or lack of understanding of the work load involved in bid prep. Both of these problems are easily addressed.

 

Agreed. (Emphasis above is mine.)

 

It would be interesting if a member of the NCC reached out DIRECTLY to the presidents of IPMS chapters around the country who run successful, annual contests to find out if they’ve ever considered hosting the Nats. Some would politely say, “No thank you,” because they’re not interested, but others might say, “We’d like to but don’t have the resources.” That’s a huge opportunity and that is where the NCC should make an effort to help.

I think of Mosquitocon here in my neck of the woods. (And I’m not a member, so this comment is purely theoretical.) IPMS New Jersey's annual contest is very strong, and I think they’d be well positioned to run the Nats. However, I can imagine them saying that finding an affordable venue in the area is a challenge. What then could IPMS do to help the club? At the moment, not much, because we don’t think beyond the norm, but there could be creative ways to host the Nats in a region that most dismiss as too expensive.

Steve

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About that "31' convention, there were 14,000 of them! There were less than 900 of us. And while we just squeaked by our room night minimum to get the facility free, the 31's almost filled up the rest of the entire downtown hotel inventory for up to five days. When our 300 or so went to our banquet in that one room to meet our food and beverage requirement, their affair was held in the Nationwide Area that holds 21,000 for concerts and has over 650,000 sq/ft for exhibit space. We are so small potatoes that it isn't a case of us sharing with them, but rather them sharing with us. It wouldn't matter if we offered the venues a life time deal, we'd get nothing in return because they don't have to. Here in Columbus they are expanding the main convention center and building more hotels for one reason, to attract more and bigger gatherings. In a few years, we may not be able to afford it anymore or even get in the door to ask about it.

 

Our problems are not in man power, or committees or any of that other stuff. It's MUCH more basic. We just use too much space for the room nights we provide and the facilities cost more than our rather, shall we say, frugal membership is willing to pay to attend. If we charged $100 registration or a bit more and/or started charging by the model for the contest two things would happen. We'd have more money to maybe afford more places and with fewer entries because we would not have those guys who show up with 10-20 models, we'd need less space. Of course, attendance would probably go down as well. It's Churchill's conundrum wrapped in a problem. If we don't keep the current, highly economical and dare I say successful system, we will have to have a major paradigm shift that will literally change everything and who knows what that would bring.

 

Just some rambling thoughts.

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Here is kind of a random thought for the participants of this thread. That is what I will call reachable population. My first number that I will flat out say is just shy of capricious is 500 miles. I would say that that is about the maximum that I would call a "days drive". I am not opening this number up to discussion. It is just what I would consider reasonable for me. Given that I would suspect(again without proof) that a large portion of the modelers that would attend are within or very close to that distance. With air fares being what they are, I would suspect that those who fly into a convention would not find the difference in fares a deterrent for going.

 

Having laid all this out, I wonder if anyone has considered population within a given radius as a consideration when selecting a site. For example, using the top 25 metropolitan centers(not perfect by a long ways but usable) Omaha would have a rough population within 500 miles of about 20 million(and please, I'm not bagging on Omaha) Knowing that you can't force a bid out of any club, if you look at Las Vegas, they have a population of about 36 million within 500 miles using the same criteria. To me this also explains why the east coast centers around the Chesapeake have great success. A similar number for that area is about 63 million within 500 miles. Phoenix would have a number of 31 million.

 

I am not saying that this should be a major criteria but it is certainly wouldn't hurt to consider it when encouraging bids.

Edited by PeteJ
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Peter, you have the right idea, but I think you're using the wrong criteria (mileage). In my experience (25 Nats since '77), the cut-off for driving is 8-10hrs. If people can make it there in that time or less they consider it "drivable" and try to attend. The hard core you mention will stretch that of course (I did 12-13hrs each way this year), or they'll fly instead. You're generally correct that for the hard core the difference in cost isn't the deciding factor, they attend if they can afford it, even if it costs more to fly.

 

Also, your idea of population centers explains why some shows are SO much more successful than others. Columbus (for example) has a HUGE area to draw from when you draw that 8-10hr travel circle around it. The same goes for Atlanta and the central east coast. This is why the east and mid-west Nats are always the best attended and the least risky for profit/loss. The farther west you travel, the more those populations shrink since there so much more open space between the cities. This doesn't discount west/west coast shows, it just makes them generally smaller in attendance, and slightly higher risks. There's also fewer clubs in those regions which cuts back on the number that can even consider bidding from the start. That's why we're discussing such things as "subsidizing" a facility cost and centralizing Nats committee jobs; and any other ideas that would make it easier for more clubs in the smaller (and/or more expensive) population centers to have a better chance of trying to host a Nats.

 

As Ron points out, IPMSUSA is NOT an attraction worth the attention of most city's tourist bureaus. While it might be great if municipalities bid for our Nats, it won't happen because we're just not worth the effort when it comes to the dollars we bring to town when compared to other conventions.

 

Dick Montgomery's comments go a L-O-N-G way in explaining why little to no changes or improvements in the way the Nats is run have occurred up til now. He sat on the Eboard and obviously wasn't interested in change. His comments show that he likes the way it's been done for the last 20yrs and isn't interested in change, even if it's done in an effort to involve MORE IPMS chapters and perhaps make it possible to go places we haven't held a Nats before, or in a very long time. He cites a lack of benefits from centralizing Nats committee jobs while that's EXACTLY what has made the computerized registration and the awards program work so well!

 

He cites a lack of information, but he's mistaken. As a past club president and the current chapter contact I can say that I've gotten a letter from the 2nd VP EVERY year when the Nats bids are solicited. For a long time that letter had extra financial info with past convention details so interested bidders would have an inkling of what was needed. If anything, that might have actually made it look more daunting than it is. Now the letter merely refers to the info being available for those truly interested in bidding. Tips, links to people with past Nats experience, and all the statistics you need are already available, and is NOT the reason more chapters don't bid. Most chapters aren't interested (period), and others are certain that their particular city would not be a place people would view as desirable to go to for a Nats (difficult geographic location, lack of museums, etc.). So, there's probably only about 1/4 of our 200 chapters that would even fleetingly consider making a bid, and then that number shrinks from there for all of the reasons and problems we're trying to overcome.

 

Now we're trying to discuss taking the idea of centralization a step farther and Dick's worried about people getting free room nights at the show. While we're a volunteer Society, and many people do a lot of stuff with little or no compensation, I don't see any reason not to have some sort of carrot attached to the work stick we're offering, especially when it involves multi-year commitments from people.

 

I think we have a very good National Convention. I've watched it grow, and in many ways it's more fun now than it was when it was smaller. I think most of us agree that we want to try to make changes that will either maintain what we have, or even allow it to grow more. But, as Ron points out, we may have reached a point of pricing ourselves out of the space we really need, at least under the conditions we've been using to bid and award conventions til now. Dick is correct in that we've never failed to have a bid for a Nats, at least not YET! However, it has gotten MUCH more dicey over the last 10yrs, as well as more expensive. We've had more repeat bidders the last 20yrs than the previous 30yrs. We HAD to give up the east-central-west bidding rotation just to be sure we WOULD have bids. And, there's been a decided downturn in west coast Nats in that time, which is something IPMSUSA WILL need to address if it wants to hold the Society together nationwide. It's better to plan for change and implement it as needed than to sit back and ignore problems because you like the status quo and "local flavor".

 

GIL :smiley16:

Edited by ghodges
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I believe it mostly on the vendor side Nick, especially the first day, and also when load out occurred Sunday morning. The only other time was when the ladies all jammed the hotel elevators at the same time. I know Jerry and I climbed 7 floors of stairs since we'd have been waiting 20+ minutes for elevator space.

 

GIL

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2. Local hosts cannot fund what they need because they cannot collect until after the previous convention passes. When paying deposits, they are required when contracting with further deposits required before the one year out mark. Often times, these are hard to make - even with the seed money that can come from IPMS. I recall this being an issue with deposits for the 2005 convention. We had to twist arms to make the dates work, but the one year funding horizon causes issues.

 

3. Legal establishment - local hosts should establish 501C3 status to make sure they're protected on the tax front. IPMS has this, local chapters don't. We spent a lot of money to get this done in Atlanta. Some other hosts have done it, others haven't. The list of liabilities from not being incorporated are long, especially for locals having to sign contracts worth tens of thousands.

 

Paul, unless I am misremembering how it works now, Art's message about tax implications and such were addressed by the EB and the show's finances are handled directly by the Natl Society for tax reasons plus it saves the expense of establishing a repeating IRS expense. All payments, in and out, go thru the Treasurer now.

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Perhaps you are correct, IPMS/USA should pay them instead (as Ron suggested) - this was an alternative to save the society funds by using "freebies" usually given by the host hotels in exchange for selling out a room block. IPMS/USA should ALWAYS use the free option when available instead of spending our treasure, IMO.

 

I do not favor members of a future central committee getting a free ride to the convention.

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Nick,

The main issue with the 31 group was that since they were in town at the same time, all the other hotels were committed to them, so we could neither expand our room block at the Hyatt nor house anyone anywhere downtown.

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