Say what?

[gurdymonkey]

Collegium-Con?

Of course, it's on the same weekend as the Free Artillerie Company muster at Woodland. 

Volunteer to teach stuff nobody wants to hear about and pony up for a hotel room at an event where evidently the chief attraction is that "we will have the Club in the hotel to ourselves Saturday night for partying and
dancing. (Yes, there will be a bartender.) Woo hoo!"

Or educate the general public about Royalist Scots during the English Civil war right down to our spiffy reproduction firearms, jam with Dale and maybe pick up some lemonade money busking, PLUS share a potluck with re-enactors from all over the timeline (Hadrian's Wall to Viet Nam)? 

Where's my wool petticote?

Comments

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good decision :-)

[saiaiko.livejournal.com]

This time next year, we'll just have to have you out to teach at Mi no Hi.

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

Cecily posted links to some pictures - looks like it was a fun event!

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

Forgive me, but being cooped up in a hotel is not what I attend SCA events for. It's not medieval, it's not conducive to trying to BE medieval and given the state of my hems after every Twelfth Night, it's not even conducive to wearing one's nicest garb.

And that's not even considering the expense. $15 for a weekend of camping vs. $99/night for a hotel room just doesn't make sense to me.

[vittoriosa.livejournal.com]

Please don't fear. The "dancing" advertised is a Caroso-style ball with live music performed on period instruments, and the "entertainment" is performances by the Queen's Artisans. So what you will do that evening is hang out with us, dance and sing and schmooze just like you would at any other ball.

However, given that we have this unfortunate site situation to work with (we did NOT choose the hotel, this is fallout from a mixup re: the 12th Night site), we are trying REALLY hard to draw in people who would not normally think about coming to Collegium. The hardcore art-and-research geeks will come anyway. People who regularly attend Collegium will still attend this Collegium. But that core is small, and given that we have this enormous space to fill, we want to try to attract some fresh blood. And yeah, this will mean an extremely goofy advertising campaign... but I am all for taking extreme measures if, as V says, "it gets butts in the seats."

We didn't ask to be in the hotel's nightclub -- we were originally supposed to have one of the ballrooms -- but they changed the rooms on us. We have the club for meals and classes the entire day, and it is the only space large enough for the dance. Yes, there is a certain absurdity to doing galliards and pavans under a disco ball, but we're going to have to embrace it.

We expect the dancing and music will wind down around 10pm, and yes, things will get silly then... but it's also late enough that I hope people won't be bothered if we switch to a movie screening instead of period entertainment.

Basically this is a lemons-into-lemonade thing, and yeah, a few seeds might slip into the drink, but we're trying to produce the most successful event we can given the circumstances. I totally get that some people will be turned off by our approach, but de gustibus non est disputandum.