Ridiculous venue requirements

Bryan · Mar 13, 2009

OK, from the Indiana thread....what are some of the ridiculous venue requirements you've had? Whether or not you used the venue or not.

At the Twin Cities competition, I get in there and the director of the library greets me and hands me a set of keys and tells me that if the person doesn't remember to prop open the door when they leave, the door automatically locks, and I should check them periodically to make sure they're unlocked. What? Why not just not have the door automatically lock?

Looking at some other Rochester venues, I talked with someone at the community college. I e-mailed her and asked if she could just send me some basic information, but she wants to set up a meeting instead. Fine....sometimes they want to work out some details. One of the first things out of her mouth is, "Yeah, we can't have the competition run later than 3 PM on Saturday." Um.......isn't that basic information? anyway, she's telling me what her job is, and she sums it up as, "My goal is to get middle and high school students to come to the campus so that they know we're here, and they see that it could be a potential place for them after high school." And yet, she does absolutely nothing to try and help me out, and encourages me to hold the competition elsewhere.

She also asked about if I was going to charge anything, so I mentioned that yes, I do have some costs I need to cover and registration fees pay that, but any profits are put towards future competition or equipment. She tells me that free events are more popular, and that "I should look to see what expenses I have, and make a budget." Ummm.....yeah, a budget doesn't really do you any good unless you have income. She also gave me a bunch of other advice where I was tempted to ask her if she thought I was 12.

pjk · Mar 13, 2009

Bryan said:
OK, from the Indiana thread....what are some of the ridiculous venue requirements you've had? Whether or not you used the venue or not.

At the Twin Cities competition, I get in there and the director of the library greets me and hands me a set of keys and tells me that if the person doesn't remember to prop open the door when they leave, the door automatically locks, and I should check them periodically to make sure they're unlocked. What? Why not just not have the door automatically lock?

Looking at some other Rochester venues, I talked with someone at the community college. I e-mailed her and asked if she could just send me some basic information, but she wants to set up a meeting instead. Fine....sometimes they want to work out some details. One of the first things out of her mouth is, "Yeah, we can't have the competition run later than 3 PM on Saturday." Um.......isn't that basic information? anyway, she's telling me what her job is, and she sums it up as, "My goal is to get middle and high school students to come to the campus so that they know we're here, and they see that it could be a potential place for them after high school." And yet, she does absolutely nothing to try and help me out, and encourages me to hold the competition elsewhere.

She also asked about if I was going to charge anything, so I mentioned that yes, I do have some costs I need to cover and registration fees pay that, but any profits are put towards future competition or equipment. She tells me that free events are more popular, and that "I should look to see what expenses I have, and make a budget." Ummm.....yeah, a budget doesn't really do you any good unless you have income. She also gave me a bunch of other advice where I was tempted to ask her if she thought I was 12.

Haha, those sound quite hectic.

For the latest Denver competition I'm working on now, my first thought was hosting it at my college. So I emailed the Student Activities Director and he wanted to meet up, so I said great. I go in and meet with him, talk to him about all the details, and he is more than helpful during the entire meeting. Then right at the end, he said you just need to talk to "Sarah" to register and schedule your event. So we head over to her office, and she is gone. So he tells me to send her an email. So the meeting ends, and about 2 hours later, I send her an email. I simply told her the situation, and the time I wanted to use the venue. She replies back very rudely: "we need more information than that!". I thought, wow, if she needs more info, you'd think she would tell me what she needed. So I start writing her back, and as I am writing I notice I get another email from her. She sends a form with the information she needs. So I fill it out for April 25, and fill in all the other details, and send it back. I get a reply from her a couple hours later saying nothing but "that date is full". I write her back asking what dates are available in April so I don't have to keep guessing. She says April 4 is the only day available. So I fill out the form again for April 4, and email her. She writes back a the next day saying that April 4 actually isn't available, and the venue will be closed all day that day. So I think, great. So I ask her what dates are available for March/May. She writes back saying "tell me your date", and then she adds, "also, it will cost you $600 for the day". I write her back telling her that I am a student, and if I can get it any cheaper (I know for sure many students get to use this venue all the time for free because they are students). She writes back and says "if you're a student organization, I can do it for $300 at the lowest". I could easily create a speedcubing club, but since I won't be at the same college next year, I didn't want to waste their time to simply leave in a couple months.

So, I ended up dumping that place and found another place that is almost as good, completely free, and in about 5 minutes of work, I had the venue confirmed for the night before and the day of the competition. Some people are really willing to help, others, sadly, aren't.

Bryan · Mar 13, 2009

Another one I had. A local sports group tries to bring in various tournaments, so they, along with a hotel, approached me about holding a 2-day competition. First thing the hotel does is say, "Well, our first goal would be to hold the Nationals here." I told them that that wouldn't happen, but there's no reason you couldn't have a different tournament. So they try to get some feel for how many people will show up, and I explain to them that I can do a lot to encourage people to stay at the hotel (have it on the website, give people discount if they stay there, etc), but I can't guarantee them any numbers. But she states that she would still be interested because basically they're just providing tables and chairs, and in return, they'll get some rooms, and probably a lot of food sales too. I suggest we can diversify the competition by bringing in other groups, like a parallel chess tournament or other events that don't need anything besides tables and chairs. anyway, they drag their feet, and finally I just said, "Fine, let's just lock down a weekend and we'll see if the others want that weekend also, otherwise we'll just have the cube competition." So they respond back that before they do that, they would want some guarantee of numbers otherwise I would have to pay a rental fee. I responded back that if they want some guarantee, let let me know what the actual numbers are, because there's a huge difference between "Pay $200 if you don't get 10 roomnights at $79/night" and "Pay $1000 if you don't get 50 roomnights at $159/night". And they never responded to that.

Kian · Mar 13, 2009

pjk said:
Bryan said:

OK, from the Indiana thread....what are some of the ridiculous venue requirements you've had? Whether or not you used the venue or not.

At the Twin Cities competition, I get in there and the director of the library greets me and hands me a set of keys and tells me that if the person doesn't remember to prop open the door when they leave, the door automatically locks, and I should check them periodically to make sure they're unlocked. What? Why not just not have the door automatically lock?

Looking at some other Rochester venues, I talked with someone at the community college. I e-mailed her and asked if she could just send me some basic information, but she wants to set up a meeting instead. Fine....sometimes they want to work out some details. One of the first things out of her mouth is, "Yeah, we can't have the competition run later than 3 PM on Saturday." Um.......isn't that basic information? anyway, she's telling me what her job is, and she sums it up as, "My goal is to get middle and high school students to come to the campus so that they know we're here, and they see that it could be a potential place for them after high school." And yet, she does absolutely nothing to try and help me out, and encourages me to hold the competition elsewhere.

She also asked about if I was going to charge anything, so I mentioned that yes, I do have some costs I need to cover and registration fees pay that, but any profits are put towards future competition or equipment. She tells me that free events are more popular, and that "I should look to see what expenses I have, and make a budget." Ummm.....yeah, a budget doesn't really do you any good unless you have income. She also gave me a bunch of other advice where I was tempted to ask her if she thought I was 12.

Click to expand...

Haha, those sound quite hectic.

For the latest Denver competition I'm working on now, my first thought was hosting it at my college. So I emailed the Student Activities Director and he wanted to meet up, so I said great. I go in and meet with him, talk to him about all the details, and he is more than helpful during the entire meeting. Then right at the end, he said you just need to talk to "Sarah" to register and schedule your event. So we head over to her office, and she is gone. So he tells me to send her an email. So the meeting ends, and about 2 hours later, I send her an email. I simply told her the situation, and the time I wanted to use the venue. She replies back very rudely: "we need more information than that!". I thought, wow, if she needs more info, you'd think she would tell me what she needed. So I start writing her back, and as I am writing I notice I get another email from her. She sends a form with the information she needs. So I fill it out for April 25, and fill in all the other details, and send it back. I get a reply from her a couple hours later saying nothing but "that date is full". I write her back asking what dates are available in April so I don't have to keep guessing. She says April 4 is the only day available. So I fill out the form again for April 4, and email her. She writes back a the next day saying that April 4 actually isn't available, and the venue will be closed all day that day. So I think, great. So I ask her what dates are available for March/May. She writes back saying "tell me your date", and then she adds, "also, it will cost you $600 for the day". I write her back telling her that I am a student, and if I can get it any cheaper (I know for sure many students get to use this venue all the time for free because they are students). She writes back and says "if you're a student organization, I can do it for $300 at the lowest". I could easily create a speedcubing club, but since I won't be at the same college next year, I didn't want to waste their time to simply leave in a couple months.

So, I ended up dumping that place and found another place that is almost as good, completely free, and in about 5 minutes of work, I had the venue confirmed for the night before and the day of the competition. Some people are really willing to help, others, sadly, aren't.

Never underestimate the red tape and incompetence of a college administration. It's one thing I really don't miss about college.

JBCM627 · Mar 13, 2009

Kian said:
Never underestimate the red tape and incompetence of a college administration. It's one thing I really don't miss about college.

Cornell wasn't too bad to organize at... there were a number of forms (er.. 7 or 8?) we had to fill out, but there wasn't any big problem. I guess at Cornell08, there were signs taped on the walls directing people to the room, which wasn't in an obvious location. At one point a maintenance worker walked in carrying all the signs crumpled up in a ball, handing them to us, stating we couldn't tape things to the walls. He did provide us with an extra table though, so I can't complain too much.

OSU has actually been amazingly helpful. Student orgs here can book nearly any room for free (was like that at Cornell, too). Renting tables and chairs can be a bit pricy, which is the only minus. Student event services here did a great job letting me know what was available and when, recommending rooms, etc. Had I been more on top of things, I might have even been able to secure quite a bit of funding.

Jhong253 · Mar 13, 2009

Maybe the museum wasn't so bad after all... apart from weeks of delaying, I think everything else was somewhat reasonable.

I think public library was probably the easiest -- any public organizations can book rooms for free. It's illegal to charge any sort of fees in the library in Bloomington though...

IU (unlike OSU) is not exactly helpful to a high school student who takes IU classes. I don't know how helpful the university would be to full time students, but definitely not helpful at all to me...

Ridiculous venue requirements

Bryan

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