What's in a Field?

[JimF-LowBari]

5 hours ago, garfield said:

It's not nefarious, it's just a hard floor minimum.  In this context the only solution is to lower the minimum to solve what you see as a catch-22. 

I believe that WC should not be easy to get into. 

DCI is an event promotion company at its core that attends to the needs and desires of the WC members.  Being "more new corps friendly" would obviously mean lowering the minimum that the membership just agreed to increase, would distract DCI personnel from the job it does for it's members, and would (in the members' eyes) lower the "quality" and consistency of the WC program format.

 

Never said nefarious. I’m saying DCI waiting until a few weeks before start of the season to say yes or no makes it harder on a corps and for no good reason that I can tell. What the heck that has to do with your response defending DCI I have no idea. 

[garfield]

9 hours ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Well we have a new corps (Carolina Gold) that wants to come in but have to wait until a few weeks before the season starts to see if they are approved.

Sounds like Catch 22 to me, you need be approved to help your recruiting but can’t be approved until you have enough recruiting to have a good sized corps. 
 

DCI needs to study how to be more new corps friendly. And I don’t mean have sound sport and hope for the best

 

3 hours ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Never said nefarious. I’m saying DCI waiting until a few weeks before start of the season to say yes or no makes it harder on a corps and for no good reason that I can tell. What the heck that has to do with your response defending DCI I have no idea. 

OK, Jim.  You never said (again) that DCI has to be better at something and, if you had, that's not saying they have to do something better or criticizing their process or motivations and, of course, it's not saying that they're doing something poorly that needs to be changed.  Got it.

I disagree and say No, they don't have to do that.  Then you say I'm "defending DCI".

Got it.  Now that I'm clear we can move on.

/s

 

 

[JimF-LowBari]

43 minutes ago, garfield said:

 

OK, Jim.  You never said (again) that DCI has to be better at something and, if you had, that's not saying they have to do something better or criticizing their process or motivations and, of course, it's not saying that they're doing something poorly that needs to be changed.  Got it.

I disagree and say No, they don't have to do that.  Then you say I'm "defending DCI".

Got it.  Now that I'm clear we can move on.

/s

 

 

All I’m saying is waiting a few weeks until the season starts to approve a corps makes it harder on corps. Also I can’t see a good reason to wait that long.

Never said anything about DCI having to be better or criticizing their process, etc. I just commented/disagreed on one item and never meant it to cover a wide range.

Now we’re clear

Edited January 16, 2020 by JimF-LowBari

[garfield]

49 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:

All I’m saying is waiting a few weeks until the season starts to approve a corps makes it harder on corps. Also I can’t see a good reason to wait that long.

Never said anything about DCI having to be better or criticizing their process, etc. I just commented/disagreed on one item and never meant it to cover a wide range.

Now we’re clear

Shoot, after thinking about your, usually, salient point on my long commute to the office, I was hoping to catch and edit my post before you had a chance (you're obviously an early-riser, too).

Let's dial back and look at your real point, and also a point or two that I don't think you meant to make.

First, are the circumstances behind why Gold is waiting been made public?  I've not seen but I've not been looking.  Once we know that then we can discuss further but your statement doesn't mention WHOM you think is the cause of the "waiting".  Maybe Gold waited too long to meet some goal required to apply.   Right, I agree that waiting until "a few weeks" before the season starts (isn't that June?) makes it hard - maybe DCI doesn't need to do anything and it's actually Gold that needs to demonstrate their abilities to meet the minimums before they are approved.  In careful reading, your (militarily-efficient) sentence structure actually left out WHO you were suggesting is the cause of Gold's delay.  But your suggestion that DCI has to do something is, I think, what tripped me up.

Second, and more interesting to me, is this notion that getting DCI approval helps recruiting.  Of course it does but that's not a catch-22.  The minimums to attain WC are a demonstration of viability by Gold.  Yes, it's true, getting to the minimum and the big dance is critical important to recruiting older players with an Indy-goal, but that's not a catch-22.  That's an example of the benefit to Gold of doing it according to the expectations of quality and time limits.  

It's hard for me to rationalize all of the angst, hand-wringing, accusations, insinuations, and outright fabrications made about the leadership of the activity and how the whole thing seems to be crumbling when, at the same time, the seeming KEY to a new corps' success is gaining access to this same, what, cesspool of bad decision-making.  Without claiming you're part of that for any particular of your comments, there are an awful lot of daggers hurled at decision-making people and groups in leadership positions of the activity that, still, darn-near every corps wants (or "needs" to use your term) to rub shoulders with to make the next big step in attracting increasingly-better MMs.  The dichotomy is interesting, and maybe revealing of some posters' motivations.

Edited January 16, 2020 by garfield

[JimF-LowBari]

Was thinking of responding but see the “outright fabrications” and “daggers thrown” part of the post and no idea who you are talking about. The responses I’ve been getting since the weekend are concerning for reasons I am not getting into. FYI not going to respond anymore as not feeding into this.

[garfield]

27 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Was thinking of responding but see the “outright fabrications” and “daggers thrown” part of the post and no idea who you are talking about. The responses I’ve been getting since the weekend are concerning for reasons I am not getting into. FYI not going to respond anymore as not feeding into this.

 Wasn't directed at you and I even said so.  But, thanks for reading.  EDIT: And If I've offended your sensibilities at some point, I apologize.

 

 

Edited January 16, 2020 by garfield

[cixelsyd]

10 hours ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Well we have a new corps (Carolina Gold) that wants to come in but have to wait until a few weeks before the season starts to see if they are approved.

Sounds like Catch 22 to me, you need be approved to help your recruiting but can’t be approved until you have enough recruiting to have a good sized corps. 
 

DCI needs to study how to be more new corps friendly. And I don’t mean have sound sport and hope for the best

Sorry to have to nitpick, but Carolina Gold is not a new corps.

Why does that matter?  Because if they were, their ENTIRE SCHEDULE would be redacted from DCI.org until May/June, and even posting a tentative schedule publicly ON THEIR OWN WEBSITE, to give prospective members any idea what they have planned, would be frowned upon.

Existing units in SoundSport are also treated as "new corps" (except for Phenom, a 112-member program run by a DCI member corps).  So Carolina Gold is getting better treatment in recognition of being an existing corps.

10 hours ago, garfield said:

It's not nefarious, it's just a hard floor minimum.  In this context the only solution is to lower the minimum to solve what you see as a catch-22. 

I believe that WC should not be easy to get into. 

DCI is an event promotion company at its core that attends to the needs and desires of the WC members.  Being "more new corps friendly" would obviously mean lowering the minimum that the membership just agreed to increase, would distract DCI personnel from the job it does for it's members, and would (in the members' eyes) lower the "quality" and consistency of the WC program format.

Sorry to have to nitpick, but Carolina Gold is applying for open-class, not world-class.

4 hours ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Never said nefarious. I’m saying DCI waiting until a few weeks before start of the season to say yes or no makes it harder on a corps and for no good reason that I can tell. 

To be fair, DCI performs evaluations on "new corps" in the spring to verify they are on track financially, and to verify they really have the membership level commensurate with the competitive class they are entering.  It is not as effective to evaluate corps in the fall, as history shows many cases of corps folding in May, June or after starting tour, when all was well back in November.

Now, to be fair in the other direction:

- "New corps" are not the only corps that should be singled out for evaluation.

- Specifically, the practice of redacting tour schedules is where I have to side with JimF-LowBari.  More about that below.

6 minutes ago, garfield said:

It's hard for me to rationalize all of the angst, hand-wringing, accusations, insinuations, and outright fabrications made about the leadership of the activity and how the whole thing seems to be crumbling when, at the same time, the seeming KEY to a new corps' success is gaining access to this same, what, cesspool of bad decision-making.  

If we can stick to the point (because honestly, I do not see the crossed-out melodrama in what JimF-LowBari posted):

Of course, the key to success is gaining access.  And to be clear, at the level where corps are entering OC, we are speaking about access to shows.  If you are denied access to shows, how can you succeed?

With that in mind, think how it looks if you are denied access to the published show schedule.  The recruiting situation is tangibly harmed by DCI.org redacting a tour schedule.  If I am a kid looking to march OC, scanning my options, I do not even see prospective OC corps.  They are not even in the list of OC corps.  How do you find a corps whose schedule fits yours if their schedules are redacted?  Why would you commit a year of commuting to camps and paying thousands of dollars to a corps when it is not clear if they are going to DCI Championships, or even getting into OC?

And what is the case in favor of redacting this information?  

[JimF-LowBari]

16 minutes ago, cixelsyd said:

Sorry to have to nitpick, but Carolina Gold is not a new corps.

Why does that matter?  Because if they were, their ENTIRE SCHEDULE would be redacted from DCI.org until May/June, and even posting a tentative schedule publicly ON THEIR OWN WEBSITE, to give prospective members any idea what they have planned, would be frowned upon.

Existing units in SoundSport are also treated as "new corps" (except for Phenom, a 112-member program run by a DCI member corps).  So Carolina Gold is getting better treatment in recognition of being an existing corps.

Sorry to have to nitpick, but Carolina Gold is applying for open-class, not world-class.

To be fair, DCI performs evaluations on "new corps" in the spring to verify they are on track financially, and to verify they really have the membership level commensurate with the competitive class they are entering.  It is not as effective to evaluate corps in the fall, as history shows many cases of corps folding in May, June or after starting tour, when all was well back in November.

Ok I can see where I was unclear as CG is new to DCI as they were a DCA corps. And my understanding is they are going thru the DCI new corps process.

As for fall/spring checking I could see checking the books and management before spring and then check membership numbers when it is realistic to do that. That would/could take care of “your numbers are good but found a management piece missing” ( which might have been taken care of found earlier). Sounds like everything is checked in Spring.

Question I have is: for current corps how does DCI know the corps meet the number members requirement? 

FYI: think there was a question on CGs approval time that I posted. Got that info from a post of DCA forum about CG switching to DCI. And there were question about their schedule being posted but no one knew the answer 

Edited January 16, 2020 by JimF-LowBari

[cixelsyd]

16 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Ok I can see where I was unclear as CG is new to DCI as they were a DCA corps. And my understanding is they are going thru the DCI new corps process.

Not exactly.  Carolina Gold has been a DCI-affiliated all-age corps for several seasons running.  In fact, they would already have gone through the DCI evaluation process once on that account.

Quote

As for fall/spring checking I could see checking the books and management before spring and then check membership numbers when it is realistic to do that. That would/could take care of “your numbers are good but found a management piece missing” ( which might have been taken care of found earlier). Sounds like everything is checked in Spring.

I believe both are correct.  Financial/organizational plans are formulated and submitted to DCI in the fall, IIRC.  Then, the spring evaluation confirms they are proceeding according to plan.

Quote

Question I have is: for current corps how does DCI know the corps meet the number members requirement? 

They take it on faith.  Unless a review was triggered for some other reason, DCI would not know if an existing OC corps was below the minimum member count until they see the corps at a contest.

[JimF-LowBari]

8 minutes ago, cixelsyd said:

Not exactly.  Carolina Gold has been a DCI-affiliated all-age corps for several seasons running.  In fact, they would already have gone through the DCI evaluation process once on that account.

I believe both are correct.  Financial/organizational plans are formulated and submitted to DCI in the fall, IIRC.  Then, the spring evaluation confirms they are proceeding according to plan.

They take it on faith.  Unless a review was triggered for some other reason, DCI would not know if an existing OC corps was below the minimum member count until they see the corps at a contest.

Ok the clouds are parting and thanks for the info. As for CG evaluation might have been confusion on part of the poster on the DCA forum.

Edited January 16, 2020 by JimF-LowBari