Brits on the Beach 2010: Hits & Misses

[StagHunter]

Brits on the Beach 2010 is now history. Let the Post Mortem begin! If you were a show attendee, and especially if you were a volunteer, we'd like to know what you felt worked well, what didn't work so well, and what improvements might make our show even better.

Let us know.

[raycarbone]

Although we had another great show this year, now is the time to review our operation and to think of ways we can make improvements. The following are some suggestions provided by PEDC members and other offered for consideration:

1. Provide for On-Line Registration and Payment through PayPal
2. Unless PEDC is notified and approved for late arrival, pre-registration show space will be held to 12 Noon before being offered to day-of-show registrant.
3. Popular Choice voting should be restricted to one or two proposed categories (i.e. Most Unique, Most Interesting, etc.) with Class judging provided by 3 PDEC teams of judges for each class. The PEDC President should select “Best of Show” with the assistance of attending PEDC Board members.
4. The field should be restricted to no more than 115 slots unless additional space is granted to the show by Ocean Grove.

Please feel free to extend or comment on this initial list for the benifit of the club, show, and show participants.

All the best,
Ray

[StagHunter]

Speaking as co chair of the show this year...

Sept 27, 2010 10:31:46 GMT -5 raycarbone said:

1. Provide for On-Line Registration and Payment through PayPal

This is something I asked for this year, and I believe we will have it next year. The only caveat is we'll have to charge an extra dollar to cover Paypal fees. Most, if not all clubs have this "up charge" for Paypal, and virtually everyone is happy to save the stamp and pay a little extra for the convenience. Payment by cash and check will still be an option for those that don't do Paypal.

2. Unless PEDC is notified and approved for late arrival, pre-registration show space will be held to 12 Noon before being offered to day-of-show registrant.

Thankfully, this didn't become a big problem this year, but others closer to the issue will correct me if I'm mistaken. Of the 147 cars we registered this year, 133 were pre registered. There were something like 11 no shows (that I know of, I may revise this once I see what's left of the registration envelopes), and most if not all of these people showed great courtesy by e-mailing me beforehand. This allowed me to tell our registration people how many day of show registrations we could write. There is only so much I can do to revise the show field layout at the last moment; it was all drawn to scale a day or two beforehand based on pre registration and projections for possible numbers, up to my max of 135 cars on the show field.

3. Popular Choice voting should be restricted to one or two proposed categories (i.e. Most Unique, Most Interesting, etc.) with Class judging provided by 3 PDEC teams of judges for each class. The PEDC President should select “Best of Show” with the assistance of attending PEDC Board members.

I prefer judged events myself, and although in principle I'm all for a judged show in Ocean Grove, I'm not sure we have the manpower to pull this off here. We have 140 cars in 20 classes. We would need knowledgeable people in each of those 20 classes to do the judging, and they would have to be willing to do the work, and they would probably have to recuse themselves from their own class because you can't judge your own car. Most people are experts in the cars they own, not so much in others. Do we have 20-30 "experts" willing to stick their necks out and do the job? I'm not sure.

Within the individual classes, I think the cream rose to the top. Maybe not all the way in every case, but close enough that it was fair sport. Where I do have a problem is the Best In Show class, which is so dilute that hardly any consensus develops. In 2009, it took only 12 votes to win Best In Show. This year, a mere 5 votes won the award. Now I don't have a problem with either of the cars that won last year or this year; they were both beautiful and deserving winners, and they were also class winners (which is nice) but I do think for that award to be meaningful, the winner needs to have a greater plurality than 5.7% of the vote (5 of 88 votes cast).

What I favor is something along the lines of a dog show. A jury of 3 or so impartial experts, or even just the President, Show Chair or some celebrated guest goes out, inspects the class winners, and chooses a Best in Show from among them. That's my opinion on that.

4. The field should be restricted to no more than 115 slots unless additional space is granted to the show by Ocean Grove.

We can handle more than that in our current show field. Planned and parked carefully, we fit 136 cars on the show field this year and had perhaps 100 feet of curb space left over in nice open blocks where additional cars could be parked. I had planned for 135 cars and calculated I would have 78 feet of curb space left, so I think I was pretty close.

Our parking attendants did a super job. I haven't heard any negative comments from the "Noodliers" (parking attendants) but I'm certainly open for comments, suggestions and observations should any of the parking guys wish to offer them.

I'm also perfectly happy to have a show of fixed size at, say, 135 cars, all sold by pre registration. Pre registration makes everything easier, as we found out this year.

So we would be kind of like Red Mill, only with better food. ;D