2006Queen City Feis

When:	May 13th, 2006
Where:	Cinergy Center Cincinnati, OH
Competitors:	Ges (dancing/soda bread) Devonna (dancing/soda bread) Rebekah (dancing/soda bread) Rachel (dancing/soda bread) Luke (dancing/soda bread)
Why We Went:	It's less than an hour from Clan Seger World Headquarters
Previously Reviewed:	2004, 2005

ORGANIZATION

WHAT WENT RIGHT

A lot of information available on the website, especially on how to get to the feis site

WHAT WENT WRONG

It took a little digging to find out where all the surrounding parking lots were located
This committee made several big mistakes in planning this year's edition which should have been obvious before feis day. The first mistake was in raising the entry cap by 300 dancers without planning for more stages (and musicians and adjudicators) to accomodate them.

GRADE

SCHEDULING

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Same age group/same stage scheduling
In the biggest age groups, I observed Open/Prizewinner competitions split into three sections. Novice level comps in the same age groups were often split four ways.
Steps danced in order (Reel, Jig, etc). Within each step, Advanced Beginners danced first, then Novice, then Open/Prizewinner. Where possible, the competitions were kept in the same order within each step.
Music competitions were run the night before. Being so close yet so far from the feis site, this actually discouraged us from attempting them. I'm scoring it as a What Went Right, however, because that's what it was for everyone else
Multiple splits for the non-champion Treble Reels

WHAT WENT WRONG

Queen City was one of the many feisanna across the Midwest which was encouraged to interpret the new regional syllabus as only allowing two levels of adult competition. Devonna and I limited our dancing participation to only the Parent/Child competitions as a result. Looking at who showed up for the upper level of Adult solos, there would have been 4-6 open/PW adult dancers other than us. You can't tell me there weren't enough adults to justify running a three-level competition.
Why were Luke's Advanced Beginner hardshoe competitions on a different stage from his Novice softshoe competitions? If this was an attempt to load-balance the stages, it was almost laughable in its inadequacy
The second big mistake this committee made was in how it assigned age groups to the stages. Two of the bigger age groups (U13 and U14) were both placed on stage 4, which caused it to finish after 6 PM and after every other stage had been disassembled.

The committee based their initial stage assignments by taking the number of non-champion dancers (around a thousand) and dividing it among the number of non-champion stages (6). Age groups were then allocated to try to reach this number (167). Looking at only the girls in my handy electronic copy of the roster, I get 167 dancers for stage 4 -- and that's before I add in the boy comps or assess the impact of Figures, First Feis, and Beginner levels. Even one extra stage would have given the committee much more and much better options here.

GRADE

C-.

FACILITIES

WHAT WENT RIGHT

The main exhibition floor of Cinergy Center was used this year instead of the upstairs lobby and ballrooms of the previous years. While good from a standpoint of raw square footage, I have a lot more to say later about how it was used.
A camping area was set up in the space between the non-champion stages (1-6).
One door from the lobby to the exhibition floor was designated as an entrance, and the other an exit. This kept congestion down at the entrance all day
Tabulation was set up right next to the Results wall in a curtained-off area.
Awards were set up by stage on a long row of tables next to the Results wall. This enabled a natural and rapid process flow for both runners and dancers all day.

WHAT WENT WRONG

There was something about the lighting back near the food stand and around the Results wall that gave parts of the feis site a spooky feel to Devonna.
For most of the afternoon, the area around the food stand was open to Sixth Street outside with no obvious security around the loading dock. I would have thought that a Cincinnati-area feis of all places would be more security conscious than this.
A janitor's closet shared between the Mens and Women's room was left open most of the day, which did nothing good for Devonna's sense of unease about the feis site
The Mens Room over by the Prelim and Champion stages was relabeled as a Women's Room. This was enourmously inconvienient for any boy dancers at that end of the feis site (such as Luke). Devonna reports that the Women's room at that end of the facility was never crowded, which calls to question the wisdom of relabeling the Men's Room.
The feis fare available from the only food vendor on site was greasy, overpriced, and nearly inedible. Rachel had an upset stomach all day after eating a pretzel with some funny-tasting mustard, to list just one example that affected our family. We don't remember this being a problem our previous years.
The third big mistake this committee made was in the feis site layout, which left something to be desired in the form of several thousand square feet of unused space around the food concessions area. Camping areas only began to dent the unused space, which I felt could have been used much more productively. This is what they should have done:
- The natural process flow for getting food involved heading left from the cashier over to the condiment bar, then across 2-3 lines of feis parents getting food to get to the tables to the right of the concessions stand. The seating area should have been immediately beyond the condiments bar in the very large empty space in front of the emergency exits, and could have been easily set up as to not block them. For a bonus effect, those tables would have then been closer to the Prelim and Champion stages.
- In the area now vacated by the tables, you have more than enough space and power drops to run the vendors area instead of over by stages 3 and 4. I'm not sure about lighting, though -- if that was a concern, the lobby was also available for the vendors area.
- With the vendors area moved, the area it previously used (roughly over by stages 3 and 4) can now be used for at least one more stage. You've now solved the first two big mistakes previously mentioned.

GRADE

C-. The location has potential if they're willing to be a little creative with the layout and address security concerns.

OPERATIONS

WHAT WENT RIGHT

When I presented our family's soda bread entries, the committee made up competition cards for them on the spot
Speed of results posting all day was breathtaking, which was pretty amazing considering the size of the feis.

WHAT WENT WRONG

Someone needs to tell these people that the Parent/Child competition is a Figure competition, and is thus limited to 48 bars of music regardless of the number of people on the parent/child team.
I observed only one adjudicator rotation in the morning, which was after Figures.
The fiddler on stage 5 had numerous problems throughout the day. The two most outstanding problems were dropping an entire measure during the Adult Beginner Slip Jig and not knowing that the Traditional Treble Jig had a tempo of 92.
The afternoon adjudicator rotations on stage 4 seemed overly agressive, which was probably a function of it being the slowest of the non-champion stages
All three big mistakes noted previously in this review could have been blunted by a proactive load balancing policy toward the end of the day. Instead, this committee started tearing down stages once they were done. If they could have expended just a little bit of thought and effort to move competitions off of the slower stages to the finished ones, we ALL could have gotten out of there -- families, committee members, adjudicators -- at least an hour earlier than we did. We weren't done until after 6 PM, an hour after all other competitions and vendors (including champions) were done and gone.
In fact, the only load-balancing decision I observed was to move Rachel's Treble Reel to the already overloaded stage 4. Given the situation on that stage, it was the drop-dead worst thing that the committee could have done. It's almost as if they were more concerned about getting stages dismantled than in finishing the feis and allowing people to go home.

GRADE

D. Stages don't pay registration fees -- nor do they write feis reviews.