ANST - Looking for the heat

[Darlene Vandever]

Mark&Sue wrote:

> Baronman at aol.com wrote:
>
> > In a message dated 99-05-16 16:59:39 EDT, you write:
> (snip!)
> >    I feel that all competitors in A&S compititions should be on a level playing
> > field.  Is this to much to ask- or is it impossible in our Society?
> >

<SNIP!>

>      Why aren't the names of the judges for a competition printed ahead of
>      time in the event annnouncement?

As a person who has autocrated once or twice, there are several reasons why that
might not always be able to be done.1.  Event announcements are very, very space
limited.  Even if you take up two whole pages in the Black Star, there may not always
be room to publish such names.  If an autocrat wanted to pay for extra space,
perhaps.  But most autocrats are pushing the envelope on their budgets as it is.
2.  You can publish as you wish, but sometimes, actually more often than I care to
think about it, people don't show up to do what they said they would do at these
events.  MOST people do, MOST of the time...but I've seen a lot of weirdness happen
at these events and people not being where they are supposed to be is not the least
of it.  We are a volunteer organization and volunteers are not to be ordered about.
More than once, I've had to "make do" with an alternate person because the primary
person did not follow through.
3.  One thing that seems to happen at a number of A&S judging competitions is that
finding judges  is left to the very last minute....sometimes even to the point of
waiting to see who shows up at the event and THEN approaching them to judge.  This
has even happened to myself.  Several times in the last 11 years I've arrived on site
and been asked to step in to judge.  Once someone didn't show up.  But the other
times, they just were getting whoever showed up.  I was very happy to oblige and it
didn't happen at a big prestigious event but I still felt uneasy judging things I
knew very little about.  And we didn't even HAVE a judging form then!

All of these things that I've mentioned is not so much a problem of the A&S community
as an autocrating problem or a people problem.  Autocrats need to make sure that if
they are going to have A&S that the person handling it is getting it organized the
way it needs to be.  Delegation is fine but an autocrat's primary job is overseeing.
Letting the heads of the various groups have too little supervision is asking for
trouble.

I don't think that there is some type of "secrecy" about who is going to judge
occuring.  I think that sometimes they just don't know who will judge until very
close to or the day of the event!

Annes

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