Event Report: A&S Collegium

The Collegium was highly successful, and from the comments, enjoyed by all those that attended.

Before I get into all the good stuff, there were just a couple of less positive points that I would like to mention:

• Not being able to get the event approved at the Council meeting I put it forward at actually led to a significant delay in getting things done for the event, as it pushed the timeframe out for when myself and our webwright Katherina were able to put together the booking form. Hopefully now with more Council members, this won't happen again for anyone else.

• I was disappointed to find that I had to remind a bunch of long-time SCAdians to please pay for the event in the week before the event - in some cases this was the second time in a row that I'd had to do this. I personally really hate having to issue reminders, and dislike it even more when it's for people that have been around a while and know how things work. This is a general reminder to everyone to please be conscious of paying for events in advance, without the steward having to remind you to do so.

• The last-minute booking came through at 8.50am as I was 500m away from site, and came from another long-time group member. I have asked this person to please not do this ever again, for events where booking is required, as it is unfair to everyone but most especially causes extra stress for the steward and potential problems for the cook. We often make allowances for newbies, who are unfamiliar with how we do things, but this was definitely not the case here.

And now, onto the good stuff!

We had 29 bookings for the event, with a last-minute booking bringing that to 30, with 27 recorded as attending on the day.

Of these, the breakdown was as follows:

• 21 financial members, six event members
• three first time event attendees, of whom two came on the day
• four from other groups, of whom two came on the day
• incidentally three of the people who are from other groups are also paid up financial members of our group
• three people we had expected did not attend, of these two cancelled and one was a no-show
• we had one extremely last minute booking

Please note that although I have made reference to financial members and event members, no Levies apply as this was an ungarbed event.

Due to a double booking, we had to change venues only a few weeks before the event. My thanks to my Deputy Steward Katherina Weyssin for booking the alternative site for us.

The second site actually ended up working better for us, as instead of having two classrooms also containing the kitchen and lounge area we had access to two separate classrooms, a separate kitchen, and separate lounge, as well as several other spaces for people to leave stuff or take some quiet time out. It was only $10 more expensive than the first site, and for the money, I'd use it again in preference.

We ended up with way more classes offered than taught, but those taught offered a good variety of skills and subjects to give us a really good mix. Most people ended up having to choose between at least two classes that they wanted to go to, which was a really positive thing, as all classes on offer were in demand. My thanks to all those that taught, and all those that offered classes.

Having the catered morning tea and lunch, and access to tea and coffee throughout the day, worked really well. Anna de Wilde did a superb job in supplying us with plenty of food that catered to all the dietary needs given, my thanks to her for that.