<VV> Life is a Banquet - don't starve

[Sethracer at aol.com]

Okay - I, too, am sorry that Carl suffered the whims of a Denver door  
keeper that was told to check for tickets. He has received apologies, and  
offers. I am not sure where this turned into bash the Corsa Board or officers.  
As Bob D's repeated complaints illustrate, the Corsa Board has very little to 
do  with how the banquet is conducted. The 2010 banquet was a good example. 
The  awards were a disorganized mess. Example -The 2010 local autocross 
chair  was a nice guy, but "didn't do banquets" and no real results listing was 
 available at the banquet. The slides taken at the autocross were placed in 
 order of the trophies to be awarded, and displayed to everyone - as they  
were awarded, with no times or car types available. As the fill-in  
announcer, I had to do some guessing when the car pictures came up. Denver,  on the 
other hand, was very well organized with all the needed info  available to 
the announcers for each event. I was impressed.
 
I will air one complaint I have about the awards. A few years ago, with the 
 goal of saving time, a decision was made to bring all of the competitors 
in an  event up front, hand out awards to each of the winners, thank all the  
remaining folks (losers?) still standing there, and send everyone back to  
their seats. It did save the time of each winner strolling up from the back  
corner of the banquet hall to receive their award. But it made a bunch of 
folks  feel awkward going up front to, what, applaud? Anyway, we were told 
that this  year, each chairmen/announcer would call out the names of all award 
 winners, everyone would come up as a group and each would receive their  
award. It was the first time for this, and, except for a few award winners  
who didn't attend the banquet, it worked "okay". Rally winners came up and  
got their awards, Econorun winners came up and got their awards, Model car  
display winners came up and got their awards, Autocross winners came up and 
got  their awards. And then, each Concours participant was called out, by 
name,  individually, to wend their way up to the front and pick up their  
award, one at a time. Say, what? Since, it seemed to me, every one who  entered a 
car in the Concours received some award, it would be the perfect group  to 
bring up, en mass, and hand out the Bronze, Silver and Gold  ribbons, 
building up to the Senior class awards, announcing scores as  the awards were 
presented. Over the years, I have sat through my share of  midnight-plus 
banquets so I understand the goal of a reasonable time constraint.  But I think a 
more even-handed approach would be appreciated. I have  already communicated 
this to the appropriate Corsa folks.
 
I had fun in Iowa, I had fun in Denver, I will have fun in Sturbridge next  
year! You can too!
 
-Seth Emerson