C.Holland

Norton, Lakota East are also incredible groups a bit behind Mason and Centerville, with Miamisburg a little behind them.

just need to hire someone to actually organize and operate it.

I think you'd be surprised. Program coordinators, artistic directors, maybe... but finding those who want those positions you still grab from where you can. Sometimes they're band directors, sometimes they come from theatre and entertainment, other times from wherever. But admin and logistics come from all walks of life. I think the key is having a voice for each component. one for the art/design, one for operations, one for fundraising. after that its manpower to be organized.

was not aware mini corps was at the school. yeah, that puts a damper on things.

i think you could combine the alumni show and the mini corps into one. Add a beer garden and some food trucks and it might even make money.

i think it's a little of column A and a little of column B. I've had students who wanted to do drum corps, and baseball camp/hockey camp/dance/cheerleading... so they try to do it all, because they aren't told no. They're simply told ok, and they'll figure the schedule out as it comes and ask for forgiveness later when they can't make a rehearsal because there's so many rehearsals, but only one week of leadership camp, or two weeks of baseball camp. I would say that when I started marching in the mid 90's, there were less options for band kids. But there were also less options in general. My area growing up didn't have much youth hockey, lacrosse, dance, summer theatre, etc etc etc. Where there were baseball camps the cost was extravagant. If you wanted to take ballet, you had to go into the cities to find a studio. I think there's many more options for student members now than there was even 10 years ago. For Non-student members I think times have changed. 40 hour weeks seem to be fewer in exchange for more flexible schedules to allow for travel or more time off at christmas. But it means choosing your battles. Do you want to travel with your fam? Or go to Disney, or whatever else you've banked that time and bonus money for, or do you want to rehearse Fri-Sun all summer? Nevermind that costs to do this activity have grown.

Coming from dci Open Class perspective, unless you have one key voice at the top of the chain managing the design process, ed staff , and rehearsal schedule, whom is separate from the person dealing with operations, both of who should be separate from the people responsible for development and fundraising, it’s too much work spreading everyone too thin. That voice in charge of each branch needs to be strong, able to keep everyone on task, on schedule, and on budget. And communicative to the other two as nauseum. the one in charge of the artistic vision in addition to managing schedule and budget needs to be able to communicate the design idea and aesthetic clearly from the start, and be able to explain integration of it otherwise the staff and membership cannot.

But it's treated methodically, like scicence.

there's no perfect equation. Right now people aren't showing up like the circuit needs. How do you sell an activity or event that's inconvenient? The circuit isn't attracting the age of membership that utilizes labor weekend as originally intended. The flagship event timing limits the membership that the activity is attracting. Moving the weekend causes increased regional bias due to travel time and money required to attend. What then, becomes the solution? Do you place restrictions on design and time commitment to make the circuit more attractive to the original intended membership? Do you reschedule the flagship event to a non-holiday weekend, and hope not to lose the groups outside of a reasonable drive? Do you relocate the flagship event to a central location to put equal time/money burden onto all groups?

I think the real disadvantage is the extra travel day for any show they need to travel to outside of their region. While everyone in the northeast is already rehearsing, the midwest/south else is still on a bus.

you could then have rehearsal friday, prelims sat morning. (14 corps x 15 minutes + 30 minute INT = 4 hours) I&E sat afternoon, Mini Corps Sat Night. Alumni spectacular Sunday Mid-Day. finals Sunday Evening. Leave sunday night/monday morning. now this schedule is NOT helpful to anyone outside of a few hours drive. So sorry midwest, south/anyone not from NJ/PA/NY.

and costs that cannot be covered via the org's own development and fundraising, are still passed back onto the membership. event if its $10k, that still comes to only $67 per person if you fill 150 seats. groups won't cut an educator, they'll add cost to dues to cover the added expense.

good design is good design. Bux set their membership up for success months before they even get to camp. Music and a show storyboard go a long way in understanding components and what to teach when. But if they needed to make a trip to the midwest, they'd pass that cost along to the membership. Dues for next season will be known when the performance schedule is estimated before the season starts in november (and subtracted from whatever development marks that the organization itself has raised via grants, and donors) which then allows groups to set their rehearsal schedule. If they have to rent buses to get everyone to MN, or Columbus, or anywhere else, they'd know that cost per person cost, and up the dues as needed. Incidentally, if a 3-4 day trip on a charter bus costs about 2200-2500, the fees passed along to the membership result in around $50 if you can fill all seats on the bus.

All of this. The groups in the top box have fri 7pm -10pm, sat 9-9, and sun 9-6 rehearsals. They have full or nearly full corps by feb or march. They have the show storyboarded and fully designed by April. And aren’t teaching in August, but are refining and changing show chunks as needed. It’s a pretty grueling schedule when you think about how the 3-day rehearsals happen from May to Sept. no wonder 25+ year olds don’t come out like they used to, that’s an incredible time suck.

the group discounts for bands at DCI is pretty good. Especially if you have a large band. It gets butts in seats from the hotbed that is marching band in the midwest. when i taught bands in KY and IN, most all of them ended band camp with a trip to see DCI whether it was semi's or finals. There's just loads of good bands in that area, that feed into the corps as well as the audience.