2006Detroit Feis

When:	June 3rd, 2006
Where:	Total Soccer Wixom, MI
Competitors:	Ges (dancing/vocal) Devonna (dancing/soda bread/photography) Rebekah (dancing/soda bread) Rachel (dancing/soda bread) Luke (dancing/soda bread)
Why We Went:	It's one of the few feisanna left in the Midwest that doesn't have a 2-level adult competition. We also needed an oireachtas qualifier for Rebekah.
Previously Reviewed:	2001, 2002, 2003

ORGANIZATION

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Preregistration was run the night before at the feis hotel.
An online listing of registrants, which was useful to make sure you were entered correctly.
The committee had a link on their website to a public message board where people could ask questions of the committee in public and the committee could make announcements to people online.
Emailed results were waiting for us when we returned to Clan Seger World HQ the next night. This is the only good thing I have to say about their Tabulation operation.
When the online roster showed Rachel in Novice reel instead of Open/PW reel, I sent a quick email to the feis committee. They cross-checked with eFeis, found it had been transcribed wrong, corrected it, and emailed me the next day to let me know it was fixed.

WHAT WENT WRONG

The website could use some information on local road construction. The only reason I knew is that I was researching parking lots for taking the family to a Tigers baseball game and their website exhaustively listed them.
Extra numbers need to be printed for any dancer who has an Arts and Crafts entry
The committee had retained extra adjudicators in the event of problems. Unfortunately, so many adjudicators couldn't make it at the very last minute that the committee was forced to scramble to make up the shortfall.
The committee was so short of volunteers that they had to hire Kelly Girls to handle Tabulation, with consequences that will be detailed later. Given the size of some of the Detroit-area schools, a lack of volunteers on this scale is inexcusable.
This is one of the first feisanna in the Midwest to require all non-champion competitions for ages under 14 to dance three at a time on stage. Both Devonna and I felt adjudication in these competitions suffered dramatically as a result. It was also unnecessary given that attendance this year was lower than historically normal.

GRADE

C+.

SCHEDULING

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Music competitions were held the night before the dance competitions.
Beginner competitions were run first
Advanced Beginner levels for Adult competition.
The Soft Jig was added for Adult Open/Prizewinner. It hadn't been in years past, but I never really considered it an issue worthy of comment. I suspect this may be a consequence of the Standard Syllabus, because even the Open/Prizewinner youth are adding soft jigs.
To a first approximation, dancers stayed on the same stage all day. The two exceptions for us were Rachel's Open/PW reel and the Adult Open/PW Traditional Set.

WHAT WENT WRONG

Figures after Beginners has historically been a What Went Wrong on this site.
This feis used to split large competitions at 17 dancers. This year, they were splitting at 24. The larger value is the de facto standard across the Midwest these days.

GRADE

A-.

FACILITIES

WHAT WENT RIGHT

The same mammoth facility they had in previous years. I had few of the problems I have at other facilities in moving around.
The floor of Total Soccer had been re-turfed recently, with thick artificial grass and ample padding underneath. This was a site which was comfortable to walk across all day, unlike the concrete hell one usually experiences these days in convention center feisanna.
Outlots for adjacent businesses were open for feis parking just like previous years, and they even used a shuttle bus to service those lots (also like previous years).
Prelims and Champions danced on stages on the other side of the cafeteria, which reduced the through traffic in the cafeteria. This is a major correction of a problem observed three years ago.
The northeast rink was set up as a huge vendor's area
The middle rink on the east side was set up as a huge results/awards/tabulation area. It was almost too huge.
Two porta-potties were set up outside the South Entrance.
For the first time ever at this feis, I didn't have to spend half an hour trying to find or set up the Soda Bread table. The Arts and Crafts competitions were already set up along the north wall in the area previous years had used to post results.
The ventilation fans for the soccer fields were already going when we arrived that morning.
Total Soccer's "No Food Or Drink on the Fields" policy was not enforced.
The committee provided a practice stage at the feis hotel.
A well-stocked lunch buffet was provided by the committee with fresh-grilled food. Pizza was also catered in by a local pizzarea.

WHAT WENT WRONG

A quibble: the new feis hotel is three miles farther away than the previous one.
Some curtains need to be set up around the Tabulation area to provide some privacy for them.
If there was a designated area in which to hang solo dresses for sale, I didn't find it. I had to use a grandstand behind the First Aid area as the solo dress rack.
The upstairs women's room was marked for female adjudicators only. In previous years, this was marked as an extra men's room.
No dressing room upstairs for boys. As a result, there was a line for the single stall in the Men's Room. They used to have a separate changing room years ago, so I don't know what was going on here.
When Devonna went into the relabeled Mens room downstairs, some feis moms were freaking out about the alleged level of cleanliness in it. All relabeling the downstairs Mens room did was supply four extra stalls.

GRADE

B+. Do something about the Mens rooms. Now.

OPERATIONS

WHAT WENT RIGHT

The committee recognized before the music competitions started that the ballroom originally set up for it by the hotel would not work (it was partially open to the practice room), and was able to move it to one that would.
Since the music competitions were supposed to start at the same time as Preregistration, the committee had extra number cards drawn up for musicians so there wouldn't be a problem.
A stage monitor was posted just outside the music competition room Friday night. Don't everyone rush out and thank me, now...
Music competitions were run in numerical order, and awards were handed out immediately afterward.
Volunteers were directing traffic in the parking lot when we arrived.
The first aid station was well-stocked and manned, with a wheelchair and multiple crutches available for use throughout the day. None of us needed it, but having been on a cane not that long ago has made me a little more sensitive about that.
A volunteer manned the (propped-open) South Door during the morning, correcting two problems I had noticed three years ago
Staggered lunch hours for all stages meant small lines at the on-site cafeteria or the lunch buffet. That was much appreciated by this feis parent.
Our morning shift stage monitors on stage 6 were good.

WHAT WENT WRONG

The committee forgot to tell people to shut their cell phones off before the start of the Music Competitions
The committee's way of dealing with the unexpected shortfall in adjudicators was to retain one who had a number of dancers from his school registered to attend. The committee kept trying to rotate him onto stage 6 all morning, only to have him remove himself after a few competitions to avoid judging one of his students. I can't speak for how Dennis Dennehy felt about being dragged back to that stage all morning, but I found it annoying to have the stage come to a screeching halt for over 20 minutes three times for the exact same reason.
When I tried to go upstairs to change out of my dance clothes at the end of the day (about 4:30 PM local), the stairwell was already locked.
Stage 4 came to a halt for over 15 minutes in the middle of Treble Jigs because the adjudicator was needed over on one of the championship stages. From what I heard, it was to replace the replacement adjudicator over there to avoid a conflict of interest. Now where have I heard that before?
Afternoon stage monitors on stages 2 and 6 insisted on lining competitors up in numerical order. Allegedly, this was done for the benefit of the Kelly Girls in Tabulation so they wouldn't get confused during data entry (more on that later). Several times, dancers from the same school (Rachel and a classmate on 2 for both hard shoes, Devonna and I for the Hornpipe) were forced to dance with each other. The monitors refused to listen to reason any of the times this happened.
Results tables were undermanned later in the day, but not to the epic proportions of previous years.
The results could be written more distinctly up on the board. A dancer in one of Rebekah's competitions went home without picking up her first-place trophy because the writing on the board was so hard to read.
There were significant problems with the Tabulation operation all day:
- Devonna and Rebekah's parent/child was posted as placing 2nd on the results board and at the awards table. The emailed results had them placing 4th.
- The soda bread competitions in which Clan Seger placed bore no resemblance to the competitions in which they were entered. Luke's brown soda bread got a first in white soda bread. Rachel's brown soda bread got a first in fancy soda bread.
- Luke (a 9-year-old boy) supposedly got a 1st in Adult Needlepoint. I know for a fact he was not entered in that competition.
- The fact that afternoon-shift stage monitors were commanded to arrange dancers in numerical order for each competition (see above) is alarming, because it implies that a lot of scoresheets had been entered incorrectly earlier in the day.

GRADE

C-. There are some feis operations which simply cannot be outsourced.