ghodges Posted August 15 Report Posted August 15 This was my 33rd or 34th Nats I've attended since 1978. I've seen plenty of debacles and many, many excellently run Nats. I've been a Nats judge since the late '80s, was a Contest Chairman for the '97 Nats, and thus (at that time) had a hand in putting together the awards ceremony pics (slides, back then!). I say all that simply to point out that I've seen the Nats from the outside AND the inside and know how much work it takes to host one. The Ft. Wayne folks (along with their IPMSUSA counterparts in registration and judging AND all of the volunteers) can take credit for THE BEST IPMSUSA National Convention in my experience! From registration when I arrived right up to the Awards ceremony that closed the show they ran things smoothly and seemingly seamlessly, and did so while also dealing with record attendance and model counts in both the contest (3110) and the Tiger Meet (over 1000). I also want to commend their choice to break with tradition and simply SHOW all of the pics of the Nats winners at the awards show without announcers telling us what we were looking at. It not only sped things up, but this format means IPMS no longer needs to find the next "Bill and Aris" show each year. I also agree with awarding the Juniors earlier in the afternoon in order to give them their recognition at an earlier time as well as more among their own peers. All I would add is to show the Junior Best Ofs and Junior Grand Award winner (10 or so pics, less than 2 minutes time) to start the regular awards show in the evening. Ft. Wayne has set a very high bar as well as establishing some new ideas that I think should be carried forward. They deserve all of the praise you may have read elsewhere, but I wanted to add my personal thanks and kudos to a job so very, very well done! Gil Hodges #10803 2
66Foxtrot Posted August 15 Report Posted August 15 (edited) I have to agree with everything you said. This was my 10th National Convention (and likely my last), and probably the best in my experience. My only complaint was the absence of Andt's HHQ. That's on him, though. Great seeing you! Edited August 15 by 66Foxtrot 2
BWScholten Posted August 16 Report Posted August 16 I had a good time, took the Grex class and will resume building after my next road trip. Hunstville is already on my calendar.
Ron Bell Posted Sunday at 03:09 PM Report Posted Sunday at 03:09 PM My congratulations to Ft. Wayne on a job well done. I have some experience with National Conventions on several levels and from what I saw it ran flawlessly. And even if there were flaws, the attendees didn't see them so that means they were handled well. As the Brits might say (sort of), "Well done, that man, Ft. Wayne". 1
JCoatney Posted Monday at 05:58 PM Report Posted Monday at 05:58 PM Gil, thanks for the kind words. We've been using a new system for three years now to build the slide show, and it's getting refinements each year. Because of the Model Registration system, we just download the data for entries. No tedious typing names and descriptions. The biggest challenge for the slides now is catching errors. This year we took two passes on Saturday morning and still missed a few pictures that were wrong. Your attention wanes looking at 600 slides. We may even be able to use AI in the future to help with that. Cheers, Jim Coatney, #46815 1
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