Dayton Feis 2013 – The Inner Sanctum

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aka – things are not always as they appear. This is the follow up article that I mentioned in my Dayton Feis review from last week.

I know I have mentioned many times that I have not run a feis, and have no idea what goes on behind the scenes, but for the Dayton Feis, I had the privilege of working the morning shift in the results tabulation room. This was a great opportunity, one of those paradigm shifting things (if you are a Stephen Covey fan), that made me realize things are not always as they seem.

The room had 5 laptops setup for entries and it seems at least 3 of them were manned at any time. They had all been checked and rechecked, and the people who had done all the setup(fewer people than I assumed by the way) were  ready. We were given an overview of the application since many of the volunteers had not worked results before.  We were also given the contingency plan in case anything hit the fan, and that was to write out the results on paper, and send them to the results board. There was an ‘in’ basket were envelopes from the dance area came in, and an ‘out’ basket were results that had been entered and printed went, bound for the awards area to be posted for viewing.

As you can imagine, things started slowly. As envelopes started trickling in, ‘it’ hit the fan. As results were being entered, the application would shut down unexpectedly. As we started writing out the results to be posted, one of the Feis people was on the phone with tech support almost immediately, and in a relatively short amount of time, had a work around for the issue. Soon, all the laptops were churning out results pages.

At the laptops, there was a reader and an input person, and considering I am a geek in real life, I got to input results. The application was relatively easy to use, but I did have some usability issues with it, but I digress, as that has nothing to do with the feis or the people who ran it. The tag team concept worked pretty well, and there were often lags where we were waiting for envelopes to come in. There were also times when there were some waiting to be recorded, but I would say in general, from hitting the ‘in’ box to hitting the ‘out’ box, was generally less than 15 minutes.

This is where I had my paradigm shift, and probably the part where you are saying, ’15 minutes!? That is pretty darn good. Why so long to the boards?’ 

I had the same question. IMHO, I think there was a lag with the runners trying to keep up with things. Also, I cannot speak to the process at awards where the results went, were filed appropriately, and then posted, but can see where that could add to any apparent ‘lag’.

So, I wanted to compliment the Dayton Feis Results organizers on running results, no matter what my comments about the rest of the feis may have been, this part was done extremely well.

I guess my other point is, next time I say to myself or fellow feis goers, ‘I wonder what the hell the problem is in the results room’ I will stop and remember everything that goes into getting a result from the Judge, all the way to the wall.

 

In the interest of full disclosure – if you read my review, you know the girl child danced at Dayton and although I saw the score sheets from the judges for two of her dances, I did not enter the results for either of them into the system.  

 

Dayton Feis 2013

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The 41st annual Dayton Feis was held on June 22nd, 2013 at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.

Venue – This is the second time I have done the Dayton Feis at Sinclair. If you are curious here is the review for last year. I don’t think the venue is bad, but I think it has a few limitations.

The feis was split into three floors of the building. The competitions held on the lowest level in an indoor track and field building, a second floor that had a cafeteria, the tabulation room and where the OC/PC presentations were done, and the top level where results were posted and awards were presented. Lots of stairs so not the best for people with limited mobility, but there were elevators available.

There were six stages, which in general were good sizes. The smallest was 24 x 20 and the largest was 32 x 32 (one of the champ stages). While the smaller stage is bigger than some I have seen, the issue with this one is that it was half of a joined stage (stages 5 & 6) that were split down the middle by a piece of tape. Last year I was OK with that, but I am less of a fan this year, especially with the size of some of the comps on those stages. These stages were sharing a musician like last year, but I do feel there was enough room to separate these two, add a little more size and still share the musician.

I saw multiple slips and falls and could see ‘stuff’ on one of the champ stages. Couldn’t tell if it was hair pins, or whatever, but it was obvious. I did not see any floor cleanup or mopping during the day, not saying there was none, but I saw none.

Chairs seemed adequate, a bit heavy for OC/PC but that seems to be the norm. There were lots of standing viewers.

Camping in the dance area was very limited, but the second level had a lot more area available, just not as convenient.

As mentioned, results and awards were on the third floor, and as long as you were done dancing, that was cool, you could just wait upstairs (which is also where you exited the building). Otherwise, having them two floors up caused a lot of walking and stairs during the day.

Parking was plentiful, pretty close, and only $2.

Vendors were at one end of the room, and there were a lot more than last year. I thought they were easy to get to, and separated nicely from the stages.

Venue Score: 8  Would have been better with more camping in the competition area and if everything was on the same floor, otherwise, really not that bad.

Judges – The girl child danced 4 times and was judged by 4 different judges. As good as it gets in my opinion.

Judge Score: 10

Music – All stages except 5 & 6 had their own musician. 5 & 6 shared one, but that really did not seem to be too much of an issue. I did witness one rather long stoppage when dancers were lined up on both stages, and they just milled about waiting for the musician to return.

Maybe my suggestion of separating stages 5 & 6 will be seen and they can add on another musician next year. 🙂

Musician Score: 7.5

Food – Using the college concession worked to the feis advantage. Food was plentiful, had some variety and was priced for college students. There were also healthy options like fruit cups and hummus and chips in addition to pizza etc…

Food Score: 9.5

Vendors –  A big improvement over last year! George the shoe guy had his table, and the ribbon key chain lady, and the shortbread guy (if you are from this area, you probably know these people), and the wig people, and the t shirt table that had a nice variety of add-ons for the t-shirts. In addition though, there were several jewelry tables, and several vendors with Irish items like hats, scarves, shirts, nic nacs etc…  A nice browsing/shopping experience.

Vendor Score: 9.5 

Results – For reasons I will explain in another post this week, I thought the results were handled pretty well. The ones that I checked were up on the board within 30 minutes.

Dayton is an eFeis feis so electronic results were not available right away like some are on FeisWorx, and the feis was not tweeting or otherwise posting results electronically

Awards were on the same floor with the results, and they had a variety of awards available for Prizewinner 1st place winners.

If there were any negatives, it would be that the results needed to be posted in a more organized fashion. They were just posted as they came out and there was no order to them. IMHO, each comp should have been grouped together and posted in the same area on the board so all results for that comp could be easily viewed.

Results Score: 8

Feis Flow – Not too bad. We started at 10ish and had the last dance at around 3. Huge comps and lots of them slowed everything down a little, but without adding more stages, I don’t know how that could have been better. Our day would have been longer but they moved a few of the last dances to another stage to help get them get done earlier. The stages moved along pretty well I thought.

I did hear complaints that the lunch took to long with someone saying an hour and a half, but I was trying to sell a dress, eat some pizza and find my daughter, so I really did not notice.

Feis Flow Score: 7.5

Scoring

Remember, scoring now has 2 parts, the feis score consisting of Judges, Music, Results and Flow and then the overall WTF rating for all items including the venue, food and vendors.

Feis Score – 8.25

And the WTF Rating – a 8.57. Great job Dayton!

Remember to look for a special Dayton Feis 2013 post coming later this week.

What did you think?

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The Mark of the Beast

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For those of you who follow @whatthefeis on Twitter or on Facebook, you may recall my remarks about the dancer at the Indianapolis Feis who was dressed all in black, and whose number was 666. Now, I was raised Catholic, attended Catholic school, was an altar boy, etc… and am a practicing Christian now (not Catholic anymore, nuns scare me). Anyone who actually knows me knows I am not the most religious (at least outwardly) individual, but I have to say, I am surprised they use that number.

The Irish are a religious people, and I would assume using the mark of the beast would offend the Catholic sensitivities of the feiseanna crowd. I know that if TGC was given that number, we would ask for a different one.

So what say you? Take the poll below because I am really interested.

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Indianapolis Feis

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indyLogoThe Indianapolis Feis was held on June 8th, 2013 at the Indianapolis Convention Center in Indianapolis, Indiana.

A NOTE OF THANKS! Some of you may have seen my tweets where we screwed up and failed to register for this feis. Realizing our mistake the Wednesday before the feis, I tweeted on Thursday what happened and that we would miss it. One of the moms from the school hosting the feis offered assistance and put me in touch with the registrar who gladly accepted our late registration, even though it was past the deadline. They turned a negative into a big positive.

NOTE: I am sorry to say since we left for vacation literally right after the feis, and I am just now getting to the review, nearly two weeks after the event, I may be a little light on the details. You do enough of these things and they all blend together.

Venue – This is the first time I have attended the Indianapolis Feis and the first feis I have attended at the Indianapolis Convention Center, and I thought it was excellent as a feis venue.

There was lots of room for camping but I thought stage layout was a bit cramped, especially for the two stages right as you walked in the door. The seating for those two backed up to each other with only about 10 feet or so as a walkway between. People tended to congregate in that area to view the dancing which made walking through there very difficult, and I am sorry to say, a lot of the time it was feis volunteers that were adding to the traffic jam.

This is another feis with huge stages. The smaller ones were 28 x 24 and the larger ones 32 x 32. I did not see any slip or trip issues and heard no complaints about stage condition. I seem to remember them mopping the stages but I am also suffering from vacation brain.

Seating was more than adequate for the OC & PC stages but was more limited for the other stages.

Feis results were posted on a big wall in the main hall outside the dance area, and awards were in a room on the other side of that same hallway, so it was all convenient.

Parking was very adequate and was only $5, but apparently we chose the farthest possible parking garage from where the actual dancing was, and walked for about 10 – 15 minutes to get to the dance hall.

Vendors were at one end of the dance hall/room kind of off by themselves. Concessions and bathrooms were outside the main area in the same hall as the results and awards.

Venue Score: 8.5  I think it could be better if they plan stage a little farther apart, otherwise great. 

Judges – Daughter danced 2 times and had 2 different judges. That is what I like to see, but I determined the pattern for judge rotation was every hour, so it was possible to be judged multiple times by the same judge depending on how the comps ran. At least there was an obvious effort to rotate judges so kudos.

Judge Score: 8

Music – As far as I could tell, each stage had its own musician and there did not seem to be any issues, and I heard no complaints about the music.

Musician Score: 9.5

Food – Alright, gotta admit it, complete brain fart on this one… call it vacation fuzz, but I really don’t recall all the details, so, I won’t even include this. I can say I do not recall any real positives or negatives though.

Food Score: NA

Vendors – George the shoe guy,  the feis tshirts, the wig ladies, the ribbon key fob lady, some jewelry etc… so over all, not terrible. See a complete list of the vendors.

Vendor Score: 7

Results – OK, this was this feis’s (what is the possessive of that word?) big negative. Results were posted extremely slowly, extremely…. not Akron slow, but slow enough for people to grumble about it and for people who were posting the results to apologize as they came out.

Results issues were compounded by technical difficulties and results came out both hand printed and from a printer.

Awards were right across from the results, so that was good.

Results Score: 4.5

Feis Flow -Not too bad. My daughters dances were split by lunch(which seemed to run long to me) and that always slows things down.

The stage we were on moved pretty well. The morning shift really seemed to have it together, and had dancers lined up and ready to go as soon as possible. The afternoon shift was not quite as organized. Here is where vacation fog sets in again… and the details are limited.

Feis Flow Score: 7

Scoring

Remember, scoring now has 2 parts, the feis score consisting of Judges, Music, Results and Flow and then the overall WTF rating for all items including the venue, food and vendors.

Feis Score – 7.25

And the WTF Rating – a 7.41. A couple adjustments, could easily be higher, especially results 🙁

What did you think?

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Detroit International Feis

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50ffc40156882c9af9bec82a2a2af9c1The Detroit International Feis was held on June 1st, 2013 at the Ultimate Soccer Arena in Pontiac, Michigan.

Venue – This is the first time I have attended the Detroit Feis and the first feis I have attended at the Ultimate Soccer Arena, and I thought it was excellent as a feis venue.

There were six stages for the feis and compared to recent feiseanna I have been to, these were huge. I did the mental math for the one we were on at it was 32 x 24, which seemed to be the standard for the four under-champ stages, and the 2 champ stages were as big or bigger. Didn’t really do the mental math for those two.

The venue was huge so there was a lot of room between stages and for camping. Stands served as viewing seats for stages 1 – 4 and chairs were set up for stages 5 and 6, so there was plenty of seating. Instead of chairs for the dancers, there was a sideline bench, which I guess are readily available at a soccer stadium,  next to each stage. Considering the size of some of the comps, they probably could have added an additional bench to each stage for the dancers.

I did see a few dancers trip on one spot on stage 4, and saw and heard of some slipping issues, but the feis staff was proactive and they took breaks to mop the stages.

detroit2

Feis results were posted on a big wall in one corner of the room, and the awards were co-located in the same spot, so all very convenient.

Parking seemed adequate in front of the venue and was free. We got there when lots of people were showing up and easily found a spot a few hundred feet from the door.

Vendors were at one end of the room, and I personally thought they were a little close to stage 1 which had A LOT of dances on it, so it was fairly crowded to begin with. Concessions and bathrooms were outside the main area as well as a pub, but they were indoors and connected so were easy to get too. Wifi was available, but my 4G phone was faster.

Venue Score: 9.5  (not sure what a perfect venue is, maybe I will when I see it, but this one is pretty close) 

Judges – Daughter danced 4 times and had 4 different judges. You know me, that’s as good as it gets, but it seemed like the other stages did not have as good a rotation, so I have to deduct a little.

Remember ‘distracted judge’ from the Cleveland Feis last weekend, well he was back, and we were a little disheartened to see him as the first judge for my daughter. But, since the girl child placed first in that dance, we no longer see his distraction as an issue, in fact, that man is brilliant 😉

Judge Score: 8.5

Music – Each stage had a musician or two, and speakers for the stage, and there did not seem to be any issues, and I heard no complaints about the music.

Musician Score: 9.5

Food – A complete 180 from the food experience we had in Cleveland. One concession was drinks, smoothies, coffee, healthier snacks, some breakfast pastry kind of stuff, candy bars, etc and the prices were closer to convenience store prices (maybe a bit higher) but nowhere near some of the bigger venue pricing. Another area had hamburgers, pizza, wraps, chicken strips, etc.. all very good size and tasty. Three of us ate lunch for about $17 including food and drink.

There was also a pub on premise and although I did not venture upstairs to see it, the beer prices I saw at a beer cart downstairs were similar to what you would pay in your neighborhood bar, so who could complain?

Food Score: 8.5

Vendors – George the shoe guy,  the feis tshirts, the wig ladies, fun Irish stuff like Guinness jersies and Hanna Hats, a few artsy things, shortbread cookies, the engravers, etc… so over all, not bad. See a complete list of the vendors.  Not quite the selection of some, but a nice mix.

Vendor Score: 8

Results – I was surprised/impressed, and maybe I never paid attention before, but FeisWorx had results posted for the events in usually 30 minutes or less. Hard copies did not make it to the wall for closer to 45 – 60 minutes. When we went to get an award, the people at the table were kind of amazed Feis Worx already had them, and could not do anything for us until they received their hard copy.

Awards were right there with the results, and I liked the color coded ribbons that went with each specific medal, a bronze ribbon on the third place medal for example.

If there were any negatives, other than the amount of time it took results to get to the wall, for those people not clued into the FeisWorx connection, it was the fact that at some times, there was only one person working the awards, and if she was busy filing result sheets, people would be lined up waiting to pick awards up.

Thinking back, taking an hour to get to the wall would probably have irritated me if I did not notice the FeisWorx option, so I can only give a pretty good score for results.

Results Score: 7

Feis Flow -Not bad. My daughter danced 3 dances and a special reel. We started at 930ish and were done at about 3, and I think this was due mainly to a longer than average (in my opinion) lunch, and the special events being held after lunch instead of during like at other feiseanna.

I also saw that Stage 1 was loaded down with competitions and when our stage was finishing, Stage 1 was at about the two thirds point on their dance list. I admit, I have never run a feis, but I think there was plenty of room in the venue to add at least two more stages and spread out the load a little bit. There were two judges sitting at one of the stages for a while, so it appears they may have had the judges available, but that is an assumption. Seating for viewers may be an issue here, but I thought there were too many chairs at Stage 6, and possibly stage 5 too. (Remember, all my opinion).

Also, the specials dances seemed really unorganized. They were supposed to start right after lunch and the feis staff did not seem to have any idea exactly where they were going to be held 10 – 15 minutes after lunch was supposed to end. When they got it sorted out, the girl child told me the judge for hers gathered the dancers and asked how many steps, how many dancers at a time, etc… so she (the judge) did not seem ready.

That last comment was more about the specials, and in general, I thought the feis was run fairly well.

Feis Flow Score: 7.5

Scoring

Remember, scoring now has 2 parts, the feis score consisting of Judges, Music, Results and Flow and then the overall WTF rating for all items including the venue, food and vendors.

Feis Score – 8.125

And the WTF Rating – a 8.35. A very respectable score, great job Detroit!

What did you think?

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