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What Can/Can’t Be Changed to Help


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14 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Oh I understood your point. Just wanted to respond to the first sentence. Didn’t do college MB after my first year as just too #### busy with my class load. How many times did I hear crap about not putting band first. 🙄

I was so conflicted about that specific point, that I could find no life balance between college band/DCI and academics. Now, I know for certain that I was taking on too much but I somehow convinced (lied to) myself that I was making everyone happy by "putting band first." The damage I did to myself was unfortunately permanent, I'm afraid. I washed out of college for three years until 1995, after completing only two. It took me until 2017 to finally complete my bachelor's degree, and only after having a severe meltdown during that process. It's all behind me now but oh what I would do differently, if I could go back.

 

Edited by GBugler
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10 minutes ago, GBugler said:

I was so conflicted about that specific point, that I could find no life balance between college band/DCI and academics. Now, I know for certain that I was taking on too much but I somehow convinced (lied to) myself that I was making everyone happy by "putting band first." The damage I did to myself was unfortunately permanent, I'm afraid. I washed out of college for three years until 1995, after completing only two. It took me until 2017 to finally complete my bachelor's degree, and only after having a severe meltdown during that process. It's all behind me now but oh what I would do differently, if I could go back.

Congrats on completing your degree.

My young life and beyond were also negatively affected by putting drum corps first. And boy, do I have too many reports that validate both of our experiences.

To answer OP's first question, I'd say an alumni and member experience audit conducted yearly is in order. It doesn't even have to turn up negative experiences to be fruitful. If all feedback comes back 100% positive, great, you have more fodder for marketing. In case it doesn't, the org can directly address and integrate that feedback while also doing damage control among their internal and external stakeholders.

The leaders in this activity should no longer be allowed to assume that their member experience is perfect. Show your stakeholders the data to back it up.

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36 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Oh I understood your point. Just wanted to respond to the first sentence. Didn’t do college MB after my first year as just too #### busy with my class load. How many times did I hear crap about not putting band first. 🙄

We just found out this week that UGA's two-time national champion quarterback has been in college since 2017 and hasn't finished a degree.  All this time spent putting the emphasis on football and he couldn't manage enough classes to actually get a degree in 6 years!  He got drafted and will have an NFL contract, but not every kid is that lucky.

I had a good friend my freshman year in college that walked on with the basketball team and was good enough to earn a scholarship, but they wanted him to drop most of his classes and schedule around basketball practice.  He wouldn't, because he knew the NBA was not in his future, but a college degree and a career would be.

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48 minutes ago, GBugler said:

I was so conflicted about that specific point, that I could find no life balance between college band/DCI and academics. Now, I know for certain that I was taking on too much but I somehow convinced (lied to) myself that I was making everyone happy by "putting band first." The damage I did to myself was unfortunately permanent, I'm afraid. I washed out of college for three years until 1995, after completing only two. It took me until 2017 to finally complete my bachelor's degree, and only after having a severe meltdown during that process. It's all behind me now but oh what I would do differently, if I could go back.

 

I was a Computer Science (now called IT 🙄) major and transferred from a community college to a PA state school. Blue collar family so #1 priority was graduate (aka get the hades out) and start a career where I could support myself. 
Yeah I had different mindset than lot of people I was around. As for music … welI could play horn and that was it 😆

Edited by JimF-LowBari
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14 hours ago, Newseditor44 said:

55 x 3 = 165. Most charter buses carry 55 seats now, which is the reason for the change. Economically, it makes more sense to raise the minimum to 165 so you can collect more tuition. If not, you'll have to lower it back down to 110. 

Annnnnnd … there go the alternates 

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19 hours ago, musicteacher said:

I appreciate your heartfelt post. Ideas, anyone?

the basics... 

Find a way to bring housing cost down.  Schools charge more every season for use of their facilities. (and then add on admin costs, security costs, and yes... a la carte costs for every field and room used)

change the scoring sheets to be less geared towards 5-7 people in polos diagnosing the art on the field and reward the people buying tickets instead.  The activity is currently geared towards attracting students, on students, on students.  Because that's who fills the ranks.  Students and alumni are who largely funds the activity.  When you get outsiders with disposable income to fill the seats, those become more potential donors.  Marching music's major league can't get a TV spot as it often feels unapproachable for those outside of the activity. And the activity (band included) has become its own industry which feeds on itself.  Can't feed on yourself and expect to exist down the road. 

 

Find a way to get corps to stop monetizing the students.   
Read that last one again.  and read it yet again.  Seriously.  This means finding funding for non profit groups that is not dependent on students and their bank accounts. (or the debt they rack up trying to do this activity)

 

World class ( or at least the top 16) all have ways that they develop revenue apart from the students, yet still charge the students the cost of a used car.  Open Class are dependent on student dues, and their operating cash is largely dependent on how many students they bring in each season.  And yes, tours costs cash.  Rental of equipment, health professionals, athletic trainers, stage managers, drivers, housing, all costs cash.  Much of this is outsourced instead of donated.  For ethical, safety, and operational reasons many of these things are better off outsourced.  But the costs, when not afforded by the corps, are passed back onto the students. 

 

 

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17 hours ago, Newseditor44 said:

55 x 3 = 165. Most charter buses carry 55 seats now, which is the reason for the change. Economically, it makes more sense to raise the minimum to 165 so you can collect more tuition. If not, you'll have to lower it back down to 110. 

But, you could have put instructors & support staff in these bus seats, perhaps removing a vehicle from the convoy, which would cost less $ overall.  

break- 

Here is a proposed solution-

Part 1 -Don’t limit props, amps, etc.  Instead, limit convoy size.  3 busses. 2 semi trucks.  One food truck.  One van for souvenirs, and one runner van.  That is it.  Any vehicle in excess is a 10-point penalty (per vehicle).  Creative side- design and whatever you want, but it has to fit in above convoy.  


Part 2 - Corps are limited to 3 in-person camps (including auditions) from Nov-May.  Online camps are unlimited.  Spring training is limited to 20 days (10 min show means 30 seconds of new material per day.  People in Marching Music’s Major League should be able to handle that.). 

Part 3 - Tour redesign.  Break country into regions:

Pacific Region- Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington.  

Mountain/West Region - Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho

Midwest Region - Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee 

East - Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Carolinas, Georgia, Florida 

Other states w/ Corps will be fit in as appropriate 

First 2-2.5 weeks everyone stays within region   All Corps host home shows and other Corps in region attend.  End with some sort of regional championship.

Second 1.5 weeks Pacific & Mtn/West Corps work way to San Antonio; Midwest & East work way to Atlanta.  Seeding at SA/A based on ordinals from regional championships (winners draw to see who goes on last, then 2nd place Corps for next 2 slots, and so forth).

Next, Corps work way to Indy, but stay as East tour & West Tour.   No crossover.  First time everyone meets is quarterfinals in Indy.  Seeding is based on ordinals from San Antonio & Atlanta (top 2 in each group draw for last 4 slots, then next 2 from each, etc).   

Edit - note that I have intentionally spread out the pain between the design side (limit volume of stuff, plus rehearsal time), and the tour size (impacts fans; i.e., no more BD at Allentown, etc.), yet keeps some traditional venues.   Competition would be enhanced because no one really knows how they stack up until late Thursday in Indy.  And by spreading the pain, everyone has a stake in making this work.

 

Edited by IllianaLancerContra
formatting, speling, and further pontification
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19 minutes ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

But, you could have put instructors & support staff in these bus seats, perhaps removing a vehicle from the convoy, which would cost less $ overall.  

break- 

Here is a proposed solution- don’t limit props, amps, etc.  Instead, limit convoy size.  3 busses. 2 semi trucks.  One food truck.  One van for souvenirs, and one runner van.  That is it.  Any vehicle in excess is a 10-point penalty (per vehicle).  Creative side- design and whatever you want, but it has to fit in above convoy.
 

Part 2 - Corps are limited to 3 in-person camps (including auditions) from Nov-May.  Online camps are unlimited.  Spring training is limited to 20 days (10 min show means 30 seconds of new material per day.  People in Marching Music’s Major League should be able to handle that.). 

Part 3 - Tour redesign.  Break country into regions:

Pacific Region- Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington.  

Mountain/West Region - Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho

Midwest Region - Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee 

East - Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Carolinas, Georgia, Florida 

Other states w/ Corps will be fit in as appropriate 

First 2-2.5 weeks everyone stays within region   All Corps host home shows and other Corps in region attend 

Second 1.5 weeks Pacific & Mtn/West Corps work way to San Antonio; Midwest & East work way to Atlanta.

Next, Corps work way to Indy, but stay as East tour & West Tour.   No crossover.  First time everyone meets is quarterfinals in Indy  

Love hearing these ideas.

They won't start cookin' til corps collect the data to back them up. If the hard data is not being collected and/or integrated across the industry, no one will accept the need for change.

This sort of data work usually falls under the grant writer or advancement officer's responsibilities bc reliable donors and grants require it. In academia, it's the institutional researchers.

I'm stuck in this very pickle. No one wants to take drastic action to improve safeguarding? Fine, I'll continue to collect data until it's so vast it can't be ignored.

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2 hours ago, Jurassic Lancer said:

Annnnnnd … there go the alternates 

I swear if I hear that bus thing one more time…  I’ll bet there will be top dogs that don’t march 165.  

Edited by Terri Schehr
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19 hours ago, cixelsyd said:

You could try this three-step process:

1.  Make it incredibly complex and expensive to start a DCI corps.

2.  Watch while no corps start up for seven or more years consecutively.

3.  Make it less complex and expensive to start a DCI corps.

(We are stuck at step 2 of this process.)

There have been several corps that have started in the past few years. SoundSport makes the barrier for entry to start a group REALLY low. It's a great incubator for groups to start slow and build correctly rather than jumping into a touring model right away and be in over their heads

5 hours ago, rpbobcat said:

That's not true.

But, it would require DCI to be a true governing body for the activity.

Some examples:

   1. Have DCI handle purchases of non-perishable food and supplies 

   for all corps.

   Given the limited tour schedule, coming up with pick up locations

   for Spring training and the tour shouldn't be an issue. 

 

  2.Have DCI negotiate with fuel suppliers for "fleet" discounts.

 

  3. In N.J. an number of municipalities   formed Joint Insurance Funds.

Saves towns a lot.

Again, DCI could do something similar and handle insuring all corps

 

The "elephant in the room" here is that it would only work if the

corps make DCI into a true governing body for the activity.

Just don't see it happening.

 

The corps already do this for several things (gatorade powder, field paint etc), but the more they use their collective purchasing power, the better.

There doesn't need to be structural change for that to happen, as it's already happening.

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