Diary: A Grand Day Out

[jducoeur]

That was probably just what I needed. While Il Palio di Carolingia did face some difficulties (mostly due to schedule conflicts), the event proved quite worthwhile.

The topic of the day was the weather. I can't say that I was anticipating a good day, given that every news station was talking about nothing but the horrifying heat wave we were about to get hit by, with near-record-breaking temperatures today. (There were reports of 98, but that doesn't appear true -- the evening news makes it look like it was about 93 where we were.) But in fact, the consensus among people who were at both was that it was much more pleasant than Midsummer's Faire two weeks ago, for three reasons:

• The humidity was nowhere near as high;


• There was a halfway-decent breeze blowing more or less all day;


• This site is highly shaded, so we were able to arrange the event so that almost none of it took place out in the direct sunlight.

So while the weather prevented my intended return to my old Italian garb (which I have much of, wasting away in the closet), and I didn't quite manage to keep myself hydrated enough, I generally did decently well.

msmemory and I started the day out by packing loads of crap into the car. Much of it was on general principles and not needed (chairs, games), but we made two very good decisions on the way out. First, since I had to stop at Staples to photocopy dance cheat sheets anyway, she decided to step next door to CVS and buy a box fan, which was useful throughout the day. Right after that, we stopped at the liquor store, and bought a bunch of ice, which I spent the day offering to folks who seemed to need it. I picked this notion up from new_man at Midsummer's, and will have to remember it -- a sack of ice can work wonders for the overall mood on a day like this.

The event was a bit small and inefficient, but that was okay -- it wasn't the kind of day for efficiency. We got there a bit late, but still in plenty of time for the Procession of Guilds. I had planned on just being audience for this, but spontaneously decided to append the Accademia to the line, figuring that it was appropriate in a day with so much dancing.

ladysprite and I spent several hours teaching dance between about noon and 4pm. We had a decent group up and dancing for most of that, gradually eroding as things went along as one would expect. There was a refreshingly large group of newer dancers -- some novices, some folks who just haven't danced as much -- and they mostly seemed to be getting a reasonable clue.

For a while, it had appeared that the Baronial Performance Championship was going to fizzle -- as of the nominal start time of 3pm, there seemed to be no entrants. But lakshmi_amman somehow managed to produce an astonishing collection of performers, seemingly out of nowhere: over half a dozen performers materialized, and all were quite good -- there were no clunkers in the group, and several who I thought were very worthy competitors. I wasn't surprised that cristovau won -- it was an excellent choice of song, very well-done -- but I didn't think it was a shoo-in at all. (Special kudos to metahacker, who whipped up a really lovely piece of recorder music over the course of the afternoon.)

Court was fun, and it's always great to see friends get their due. siriel was invited into the Order of the Daystar in the early court; in the later one, ladysprite was inducted into the Order of the Moon and tpau into the Daystar. All are welcome additions to the Orders; frankly, I was gleeful to see all of them.

I was expecting great things from dinner, and it was as tasty as expected. The feast was more or less entirely taken from Scappi -- ladysprite translated a number of recipes from this mammoth Italian cookbook, which new_man and company then cooked up. Everything was tasty, with special treats like quail with olive tapenade, and a chewy honey-nut candy that jdulac got to crack with a large mallet.

The evening's format was experimental -- I wouldn't say it went perfectly, but it wasn't bad. The notion was to be a little truer to a proper Italian evening. The feast was served as a continuous sideboard of many different dishes, coming out over several hours. The feasters sat at tables outside the hall, and the dancing was inside. (It somehow seems distinctively Carolingian to eat outside because we need the hall for dancing.) The dancing was in several short five-dance sets *during* the feast. The two activities did suffer from some competition, especially at the beginning, but overall I think the experiment went fairly well.

The lesson from the dancing was that, even with no teaching, I have to leave a reasonable amount of time per dance. The 15 dances were plenty for the time we had -- getting the music together and getting the dancers up and formed took significant time per dance. Only the third set went quickly. But we had fun, and most of the people who learned the dances in the afternoon took a good stab at doing them in the evening.

End result: I'm tired, but really in better shape than I have been for a while. Nothing is quite as good for my mood as spending a day being productive...

Comments

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

Sounds nice. We may borrow some of these ideas for Ma'ale Giborim shire birthday in November. WE need to work up a menu as well.

[laurion]

I opined a few times yesterday that the format would work better with feasting and dancing in the same space, so that people would feel more comfortable getting up from their plates to dance a casual dance, and maybe not have to feel forced to do a whole set. I think you could have had more dancers, and even those not dancing could have had the entertainment of dance and music before them. Additionally, the fest tables being out of sight of the festers led to misinterpretations (especially in the early part) as to how the food would trickle out, and in what quantities. This made for quite a rush and crowd for the first few dishes, and much dissapointment when there wasn't apparently enough for what people expected of a typical fest as that point. Those who reserved themselves and ate modestly from each cycle, however, got to enjoy the full feast and the great variety of dishes. Those who filled themselves early packed up and went home, missing the luscious deserts.

[new-man.livejournal.com]

I agree 100%. I had hoped to have the dancing, the banquet, and the seating all in the same place, but I think that didn't happen for space considerations. Had I realized what was going on, I would have suggested that the dance space and the feast tables be set up in the same space -- leave the banquet elsewhere. It provides an audience for the dancers and provides those who are thinking about mobbing the banquet table with some distraction.

I also think that more pre-event information about the format needs to be beaten into people. I needed to send out information about the format to mailing lists over and over again; the information in detail needed to be in the event announcement, sent to people who pre-registered, and then available at the gate. Even then, there would have been attendees who managed to avoid educating themselves, but we would at least have given them the opportunity.

[jducoeur]

Generally agreed, but with some caveats. I suspect that having the actual feast and the dancing in this particular hall would have been problematic for two reasons.

First, I'm really not sure it was big enough -- we took up *most* (although not all) of the space just with the banqueting table and the dancing. The hall really was too narrow to put the dancing and the eating next to each other (the dancers really needed the full width that we had), and I think people would have been crowded if we'd put all the tables at one end.

Second, I think noise would have been an issue: the walls of the hall weren't as open as I had remembered them, so I think we would have had significant noise problems, even if we had put up tapestries as baffles. As it was, the dancemasters sometimes had to really project to get past the noise from the people at the banqueting table.

As for the format: yeah, I was actually a little surprised by the confusion. I think that most of the hardcore of the Barony had gotten the clue by then, but the people who don't attend the occasions where we'd been making the announcements mostly hadn't internalized it.

That said, I don't think it went too badly. The initial crush at the banquet table was largely just because people were hungry from the day's exertions, and the line mostly went away after the first pass through, once folks had taken the edge off. One thing to do next time is to emphasize that each dish will be coming out several times. As it was, people tended to grab at each interesting-looking dish as soon as it came out the first time, not realizing there would be more opportunities. I think the strong emphasis on "there will be many different dishes" and "you won't be able to eat everything" produced an expectation that there wouldn't be very much of any given dish, which was incorrect.

The thing that most failed was the notion of a mingling-oriented buffet. I think there were a couple of reasons for that. First, we probably should have put out a *lot* more tables. There were just barely enough seats for everyone eating, with the result that people grabbed seats and held them aggressively, rather than flitting from place to place as they might have done if there had been more open seats. Second, the psychological distance from the buffet to the tables was significant, I think -- people thought about it as making *trips* to the buffet table from their home base, as opposed to thinking of the buffet table as the center and the seat as transient.

Truth to tell, I'm not sure of the best way to approach this. The only times I've really seen this work was the two Arabic events, and those eschewed table seating entirely, IIRC. When it's random cushions and rugs around the hall, it breaks peoples' habits. But when we have a collection of long tables with chairs around them, everyone just falls into the SCA "must grab a table and space with my friends" mindset...

[cellio]

I've been to a few events that tried to encourage transient seating, and they all bumped into the same problem: once you've got dirty dishes you want to set them down somewhere, and once a table has dishes on it, people assume that table is claimed.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

The thing that most failed was the notion of a mingling-oriented buffet.

I understood the "buffet" part and the "eat little bits for 3 hours, not a formal meal" part from the announcements and such, but I have no idea what a "mingling buffet" is.

Do you mean like a cocktail party, where everyone carries their plates around?

[jducoeur]

That was my rough understanding of the theory. But by the time we talked about it (about fifteen minutes before the food came out), my assessment was that it wasn't going to happen -- folks had plonked down and grabbed seats, and weren't likely to move...

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Ah. Well, if you don't want folks to grab seats, don't have tables.

Is there a period story that describes this sort of thing which could be used to get the idea across for next time? That sort of thing can have more carrying-power than an instruction list for people to remember.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

people grabbed seats and held them aggressively, rather than flitting from place to place as they might have done if there had been more open seats

That's definitely true for me. And with being gone for a month, I had several offers for a seating location, but I felt like I had to pick one and stick to it in order to be guaranteed a seat, which was disappointing (and for the most part, I did, although as the evening got later there was a bit more mingling room).

I noticed the way the tables were set up, they weren't long enough to accomodate large parties, which for at least a couple groups meant an originally large group had to split up. On the other hand, perhaps if they had been longer (say, mooshing pairs of tables together) it would have made traffic problems. The aggressive seat holding you mentioned earlier kept big groups from just sitting at adjacent tables.

the psychological distance from the buffet to the tables was significant, I think -- people thought about it as making *trips* to the buffet table from their home base, as opposed to thinking of the buffet table as the center and the seat as transienthave to have a drink in hand with your food.

As far as the cluelessness on format - this just happens. People can sometimes completely miss things no matter how much they are advertised. Speaking for myself, I was well aware of the dinner and dancing format for a couple months, but I didn't know until the day before the event that it wasn't an indoor site. Thank god someone told me...

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Apart from being late, what happened with the dayboard? It seemed to be designed for a much smaller event, for instance - was that an effect of a tight budget? (Yes, I am implying that by dinnertime I was cranky from hunger, and inclined to dive right into the first food I saw.)

[new-man.livejournal.com]

I don't knwo why you didn't get enough food. After about two hours, we ended up taking platters with food on them back into the kitchen. Of all the things we put out, only the cheese and the asparagus was entirely eaten. The summer sausages, salads, and cooked sausages all came back to the kitchen. Oh, we put out some small dishes of olives, that went too.

I think the problem was (and I'm guessing) that someone decided that leaving food out on a hot day was bad and that everyone who wanted food must have eaten by now.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I and my family could have easily eaten much more asparagus and cheese. We each had a couple quarterd-slices of the harder sausage, which was tasty, but it was veggies I was craving that day. The leaf salad probably would have been tasty, but chasing kids with a plate of salad is difficult, whereas with a few spears of asparagus, not too difficult at all.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

I concur with [Unknown site tag]; by the time the first evening course came out, I was *very* hungry, as were many around me. It may be that, between the heat and the size of the event, the only way to prevent this would have been to have munchies available until much later in the day.

I wonder if this model of feast might be improved if there were multiple, separated banquet tables. That would tend to reduce the amount of standing in line, and also encourage roaming/mingling behavior.

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

sorry about the dayboard being late - that was my fault. I asked Yevsha the wrong question, and then inferred more than I should. I asked if there was any reason to set my alarm to make sure stuff was there early. I should have asked when stuff was wanted there.

Performances

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

There were no entrants at 3PM, then I convinced macfrode to give it a try and he said that he would if I would. After that, I was determined to make it a proper circle and talked up entering to folks like Peregrine. It turned into a nice small performance and I didn't exactly expect to win. You are right in saying that metahacker deserved extra points. I had thought he might have taken the honor.

I'm looking forward to my position and to encouraging Bardic stuff in Caroligia in the coming year. Hopefully, next year's competition won't be close to fizzling. lakshmi_amman was very cautious about twisting arms or cajoling folks into the competition. With so few venues for open performance, I think a little convincing is necessary for the undecided.

Re: Performances

[jducoeur]

Yeah, stuff like this often requires a bunch of active cajoling to make it work. (Actually, it's almost like running a guild -- you have to do a bit of cheerleading to get people to come join in.)

Well, thank you for being the center of the snowball. It was a very pleasant diversion on a hot afternoon...

Re: Performances

[dreda.livejournal.com]

Let's put our heads together (including my Lady's pretty head). I think the event we're running in the spring could be a useful node for this kind of encouragement. (We were actually talking in the car about how few opportunities there really seem to be for performance in the barony, and brainstorming ideas for how to change that.)

Bardic Event

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, do you have a date for that yet? I know a few out of kingdom people who are interested in coming, and two of them have schedules that fill up really fast.

Re: Bardic Event

[dreda.livejournal.com]

How encouraging! We don't yet have a date, because we're just starting to do the site research. (Site suggestions welcome!) Also, we got a little blindsided by the proposed Shakespeare event for the same timeframe, and we're dubious about the wisdom of having two performance-intensive events very close together. Yes, they're different kinds of performance, but we'd like both to be well-attended and well-supported. (Must check on status of that event...)

However, we definitely want to do April. We were thinking beginning-of, but now perhaps it will blur into end-of.