PioneerWebmaster
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Posts posted by PioneerWebmaster
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Battle for 25th:
Spartans: 69.350
Pioneer got a 69.250 at their last show... It will be interesting!
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It's very likely we could see five or six Open Class corps advance to Friday. I think Pioneer and Cascades are really on the bubble.
Very unlikely that anyone below Spartans will advance. The difference between Open Class sheets and World Class sheets last year was 20+ points. 7th Regiment scored an 86.350 at Open Finals. That means that they will be somewhere around a 66.350, give or take a point or two. Unless Mandarins are going to drop about 5+ points from their last show, I'm not sure how 7th Regiment could make their way into the Friday show.
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I said in one other thread that the best battle of the day will be the one to get into semifinals. If we see a similar point drop as last year from Open Sheets to World Sheets, it will put Pioneer, Cascades and Spartans right on that 25th place bubble. Any one of those corps might be looking the one looking in from the outside at the end of the day. It's going to be exciting to watch!
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Pioneer has no chance of making semi-finals this year, let alone finals.
Better Every Day my friend.... Better Every Day! I wish the best to all the corps tomorrow and we'll see how things shake out late afternoon. If we see the 20 to 22 point drop between Open Class sheets and World Class sheets as we did last year, the 25th place spot will be highly contested between Cascades, Pioneer and Spartans.
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Huge jump for Pioneer. Thursday is going to be interesting.
It's about time... Pioneer has been stuck for over a week around the 65 mark. It will make the race for the Friday show a little more interesting (hopefully).
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Does anyone know if the Colts generally keep the roof open for their two home pre-season games each season? If they do, then there goes all of the weather-related excuses for keeping the dome closed...
Mixed bag...
From a November, 2010 article:
Since Lucas Oil Stadium opened in 2008 the Colts have played 13 of 27 home games open air.I know they closed it a couple years ago shortly before game time because of a late change of forecast that raised the rain chance to 30%. All of the reports from that game indicated that it was miserable inside the stadium after they closed the roof.
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The dome takes, from what I've heard, Nearly half a day to open and close. And that is a factor aswell.
The roof itself can close as quick as 12 minutes. The problem lies in the fact that it takes half a day or more for the AC to catch up and effectively cool the stadium... and that's with the stadium empty.
The other issue is the fact that storms can pop up rather quickly during August in Indiana. Even a 10 - 30% chance of rain means a "no-go" for the roof being open.
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I thoroughly appreciate the work that the Fan Network team does with the limited resources. Being a tech guy, I'd love to be a fly on the wall and see all that they go through to bring us the shows live and VOD. Simple fact is that it takes a ton of time to render 8 hours of video into multiple formats. I've seen it take almost a whole night to render a 1 hour video on a PC that was built for video editing. Not to mention, the rendering process often times isn't flawless... There's nothing like watching a video back that took hours to render, only to find out that there's a glitch, skips, freezes or that the audio inexplicably doesn't line up with the video. I've seen all of the above happen.
On top of that, it takes many hours (if not days depending on the Internet infrastructure where they're at) to upload gigabytes of video to the Fan Network interface. This might be the age of Wi-Fi and iPhones, but you're not uploading gigabytes of video using either of those. It takes a serious high speed connection to upload that much data, and you're generally not going to find those connections at a truck stop, McDonalds or Holiday Inn...
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wow thought this was a dead thread..lol.....but shouldnt be I guess in general anyway...yes they would have to contact Teal or if Teal was done so wrong by many members a list of names should have gone out to the corps maybe...its a big problem unfortunately
Unfortunately, members not paying was a huge problem. While I won't go into a lot of specifics, there were a good number of members that were looking to join other corps that:
1) Didn't pay Teal Sound to begin with
2) Had no intention of paying any amount to the second corps
From what I am aware of, the administration of Teal Sound hasn't gone into hiding by any means. They've responded to inquiries as needed. At the same time, I'm pretty sure that they aren't going to spend a lot of time appeasing all of the complaints/inquiries/whining that has arisen from the parents of members that are guilty of #1 above.
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3. How do you manage members that don't pay?
With respect to 3 out of the 4 corps that chose to leave the DCI tour mid-season and 1 more that came darn close, this seems to be the biggest question that needs to be answered.
For a variety of reasons (mostly competition related), there's such an emphasis on putting a larger quantity of members on the field. In theory, a larger corps = a higher placing and more competitive corps. To this effect, lower placing corps and corps trying to make a significant move in the standings are more likely to take on members who perhaps cannot pay their full dues (or have no intention to pay their full dues) in order to have a larger corps on the field. While a corps can generally subsidize a few members of this nature, what we've seen this season is corps where as many as 80% of the members failed to meet their financial obligations. You can lay the blame a dozen different ways and fault the corps for poor budget planning, but I'm pretty sure that most corps would have been feeling a pinch if 80% of their members didn't pay. While member dues shouldn't make up the entire corps budget, they're clearly a large piece of the budget for many of the smaller corps. When members don't pay, it presents a clear problem as we've seen this season. Addressing those problems through clear payment benchmarks and clearly outlined consequences (ie. having your contract pulled, losing your spot, etc...) is the only way to assure that these problems don't put a premature end to a corps' season.
I will also second what some other people have said... All the research in the world can't prepare you for some things that might happen. 990's are one tool that you can use, but they often don't paint an accurate or detailed enough picture of a corps' financial status to make a complete decision. Even holding a copy of the corps' budget in your hands might feel reassuring, but all it takes is one small slip up to bring a world of hurt to a corps. One small gap in the cash flow of a corps can result in a late or missed payment on a line of credit. Suddenly that line of credit is no longer available and the stuff hits the fan in a hurry.
My best recommendation to any parent is to talk to the director, talk to the staff, talk to volunteers and if possible reach out to some of the parents of the veterans. Physically make an effort to come to one of the early camps and meet these people face to face. They may not be able to give you a lot of time during the busy weekend, but there's usually an opportunity to at least meet face to face for a couple minutes at some point in the day. The more people you talk to, the better picture you're going to get of the true status of a corps. If there are weaknesses, you may be able to pick up upon them the more people you talk to... especially over the course of the full camp weekend.
I wish you the best of luck and am truly sorry that you and your child had to go through the situation that you did this summer!
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I know a lot of you had feed issues on Saturday but I thought I would chime in to say that the streaming was incredible on my end!
I would tend to agree. I hooked up the laptop to the flat screen & stereo and streamed almost the entire show for the guests at my house (including my mom who hasn't been to a show in years!). I honestly can't say that we encountered much of anything the entire 6+ hours that we watched live. And we were... gasp... doing it all wireless! I had the 50' CAT5 cable ready just in case, but never ran into an issue where I felt that I needed it.
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Thankfully, my son didn't lose anything.
I don't know any details...what got stolen...how they got in...etc. Is this something that happens frequently?
Unfortunately, it does happen occasionally. With schools being open for summer activities, it's inevitable that people are inadvertently going to have access to the gym/area housing the corps. The majority of these people welcome the corps with open arms, but there are always a few bad apples that are looking to take advantage of a vulnerable situation.
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ok....they made it sound like this year also
No, this year's corps is in pretty good shape in regards to membership dues from what Roman has told me. The worst years were:
2010 - 10 non paying members
2009 - 7
2008 - 7
2007 - 6
Those number represent members who owed a significant portion of their dues months after the season ended... and made no effort to pay them.
Edit - I should add that there were additional members on top of those numbers. However, some paid up to the collection agency. Others did the responsible thing and made payment arrangements with the corps to pay off their balance.
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now thats interesting because someone from pio posted recently that you guys had the same issue with kids.hmmm and even said some kids from FL
That was in 2010 and years prior to that. The last two years have been pretty decent as far as members paying on time or achieving enough sponsorship through our SOPY program to cover their dues.
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Back in the day - DCI had a rule ,written in stone, that if you marched a top 25 corps and hadn't paid your dues in full you absolutely could not march another top 25 corps until those dues were paid. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.00. Period.
Has that rule gone by the wayside over the years?
The rule is still there, but it seems to be somewhat unenforceable for a variety of reasons. First, there isn't a central database (that I'm aware of) that corps can check to see if members owe money to other organizations. Second, most corps just have a line item on the contract that the member initials to indicate that they don't owe any money to other corps. They don't do any background or followup. They pretty much take the word of the member and that's it. As long as the members pay them, that's really all that they care about.
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I do hope if a kid skips paying a corps, they're banned from going elsewhere until they pay up.
if it were me, I'd send the business to a collection agency
Pioneer tried to the collection agency route. For the amount of money most of these kids owe, you only get back pennies on the dollar. Unless you take some satisfaction in knowing that the collection agency is harassing these members from 8am until 9pm... it's probably not worth it. The better measure is to be proactive and make the members pay up front or on a set schedule. If they don't pay, rescind their contract offer and move on. That's the direction we headed this year and we actually have 20 more members than last year.
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plus adding some Teal Sound people if i recall
Not sure that's going to happen at this point. There have been some discussions with members and parents, and the door is still open, but so far there haven't been any takers for a variety of reasons.
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Pioneer broke 60 tonight, but have some work to do. They're adding a lot of stuff over the next two weeks, so the show should really start to take shape.
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World Class
1 Carolina Crown 86.900
2 Phantom Regiment 84.450
3 The Cavaliers 80.400
4 Crossmen 75.350
5 Troopers 71.100
6 Cascades 63.450
7 Pioneer 60.750
Open Class
1 Music City 72.250
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Not specifically low brass, but we do have availability:
After several meetings over the past day, I have the following info regarding Pioneer:
Pioneer currently has immediate openings in the color guard and the front ensemble. We also have the ability to add up to 6 additional brass players. We would love to take more, but unfortunately that's what the drill is written for and it would be a fairly tough at this point to rewrite the entire show to accommodate additional brass players.
Anyone that might be interested in any of these openings, please contact Lansing Dimon as soon as possible:
Email: LansingRDimon@aol.com
Text: 607-342-8787
You may also contact Murray Davis at the Corps Office:
Email: dbcpmilw@execpc.com
Phone: 414-327-2847
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After several meetings over the past day, I have the following info regarding Pioneer:
Pioneer currently has immediate openings in the color guard and the front ensemble. We also have the ability to add up to 6 additional brass players. We would love to take more, but unfortunately that's what the drill is written for and it would be a fairly tough at this point to rewrite the entire show to accommodate additional brass players.
Anyone that might be interested in any of these openings, please contact Lansing Dimon as soon as possible:
Email: LansingRDimon@aol.com
Text: 607-342-8787
You may also contact Murray Davis at the Corps Office:
Email: dbcpmilw@execpc.com
Phone: 414-327-2847
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Yes they should just shut up for the good of the org that shorted their kids out of a tour and several thousand dollars. Those parents are 100% justified.
The parents are 100% justified, but there probably were better venues AND more constructive ways to express their concerns than how a select few chose to handle themselves (and continue to handle themselves).
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Teal Sound Facebook is worse than DCP on a bad day right now. Whoa...
Yeah... A couple parents over there have lit the torches (and in their eyes rightfully so...) and are awaiting the board of directors!
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Send all the horns and guard to Pioneer!
Hold that thought for a moment! It sucks to see corps go down like this. First Racine Scouts earlier in the week, and now Teal Sound. I truly hope for the best for these organizations. This activity needs more corps, not less!
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Free Prelims stream
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted · Edited by PioneerWebmaster
Somebody beat me to it... was posting differentials. Mostly 20+ point drop with a couple exceptions. Nice jump up for Gold, for example.