[SCA-Dance] Not a Known World Dance Seminar?

[ROSS WEAVER]

Okay I'm going to jump in here about KWDS in Ealdormere.  I was on the committee here and aware of a number of problems, but from what I could see most where not problems created by SCA Inc., but rather by the situation in the Kingdom of Ealdormere.

The slowness out of the gate of the planning/set-up of the event, combined with the Kingdom Council of Ealdormere not being as helpful as they should have, hurt KWDS.  

My recommendation on future KWDS events is to ensure the person at the lead is quite aware of kingdom politics, SCA guidelines vs rules and has a great deal of experience running SCA events.  There is a lot of working with the Kingdom level people and if you don't understand the power structure/politics there it can seriously hurt your effectiveness.  Internal kingdom politics led us to not meeting SCA Inc.'s expectations of a Known World event which caused problems.

The few advantages to a KWDS (FREE advertising, supposed visibility to all kingdoms) are good and useful and the BOD itself's requirements (mostly around accounting and time lines) are good requirements to ensure the success of a large event.  So even if it didn't involve BOD I would recommend we be have similar requirements to the BOD's requirements.

I did type up a number of details about the exact problems, but I realized it is inappropriate to post them here in a public forum because I was mostly venting.  I'd be more than happy to discuss it in private with people (in person or via e-mail) with anyone that thinks learning the details will help them avoid these sort of problems.  I don't believe in hanging dirty laundry out for the sake of rubbing people's noses in it, but I don't believe in hiding mistakes so no one learns from them.

Some things may need changing, but this does not mean we have to give up on it and never do it again.

In Service,
  Wilhelm von Pottruff