Recently several presenters of railroad programs have commented to me about being drawn into doing programs for events that involved long travel distances and then arriving to find that the requesting organization had greatly "inflated" their estimate of the audience they would be able to produce, or worse still, had made no effort to promote the event and turned it into a "private" event for their core group of members.
I have had a few experiences over the years where the number of people in the regular membership turnout of the group requesting a program appeared to be less than the number of hours it took to drive to their location. One friend recently told of arriving at a major event after a very long drive to find they were loading everybody on the fantrip that the promoters had scheduled at the same time as his program, and having to present it in an almost empty room. Others have commented to me of groups that hold clinics and programs in conflict with ongoing model railroad or railroadianna sales in an adjacent room, resulting in a small audience and constant movement and talking in the presentation area.
I have also seen instances where groups had a speaker cancel several weeks before an event, they asked another person to fill in on an "emergency" basis, then never bothered to take a minute or two to change the program description on their websites. What a nice way to say thanks for helping us!
While these things are sometimes amusing to retell, they point out a real problem in the hobby. It is bad enough that we have groups with outdated websites advertising upcoming banquets featuring people who have passed away. Now in a time of difficult economic circumstances we have organizations that mislead people into donating their time and effort for events that they know very well will have little or no audience. That is just another nail in the coffin for organized railfanning.
Anyone else care to share their experiences dealing with groups that engage in audience scams?
MX
I have had a few experiences over the years where the number of people in the regular membership turnout of the group requesting a program appeared to be less than the number of hours it took to drive to their location. One friend recently told of arriving at a major event after a very long drive to find they were loading everybody on the fantrip that the promoters had scheduled at the same time as his program, and having to present it in an almost empty room. Others have commented to me of groups that hold clinics and programs in conflict with ongoing model railroad or railroadianna sales in an adjacent room, resulting in a small audience and constant movement and talking in the presentation area.
I have also seen instances where groups had a speaker cancel several weeks before an event, they asked another person to fill in on an "emergency" basis, then never bothered to take a minute or two to change the program description on their websites. What a nice way to say thanks for helping us!
While these things are sometimes amusing to retell, they point out a real problem in the hobby. It is bad enough that we have groups with outdated websites advertising upcoming banquets featuring people who have passed away. Now in a time of difficult economic circumstances we have organizations that mislead people into donating their time and effort for events that they know very well will have little or no audience. That is just another nail in the coffin for organized railfanning.
Anyone else care to share their experiences dealing with groups that engage in audience scams?
MX
"We Repair No Locomotive Before Its Time"