British Juggling Guild

Mini - 3/27/2014 21:23 - Parent #

and there are a million reasons why its a shit idea.

its been discussed and debated to death every few yrs for the past 25..

Little Paul - 3/27/2014 21:45 - Parent #

That was my initial thought as well, but my second thought was that perhaps it's time for someone else to go round the loop, learn the lessons, perhaps another look from a fresh angle will work - perhaps it'll fail in a New! Exciting! Different! Way!

Either way, I thought I'd reign in my negativity as some ideas need a few airings before they find their right time.

Talking of previously failed attempts at British juggling organisations, does anyone know when the JTF (juggling trade federation) folded? The only reference to it I ever saw was a single article in issue 3 of The Catch, 1993

It's possible it folded immediately after the initial meeting/trade show, but do any of you lot know?

Orinoco - 3/27/2014 22:56 - Parent #

Indeed, my initial thought was, "here we go again".

I think previous attempts (most of which have been attempts to set up advisory bodies) have generally failed because it is an unnecessarily bureaucratic way of providing a service which is already easily available to anyone who can find a past event organiser & just ask them a question. This 'service' has always been available during my time in the juggling community & I have no doubt it existed long before. Setting up an advisory board is a lot of work for no benefit, the board is already there it's just that no one calls it a board.

Reading through the rather basic CIO FAQ suggests that the BJG would be much more than an advisory board though. It suggests that the BJG could do business such as arrange contracts on behalf of the BJC organisers. There are tax implications so there will be accounting & funding issues to be addressed too. Without any real details to go on at the moment I will wait until after the presentation to ask my questions.

I hope you know what you've let yourself in for Jack!

It's Him - 3/28/2014 10:04 - Parent #

Having spoken to several bjc organisers in the past because I was planning to run a BJC I have found that whilst many of them are helpful (indeed a few have let me know their costs in useful detail) even so I would still have to learn a hell of a lot that has already been learnt by someone else. A board of trustees who could step in if major difficulties are occurring with the organisation of a particular years BJC would take some of the stress away from the main organiser. Also the ability to create long term contracts/business arrangements could be very beneficial for the BJCs. On top of that there is the problem most BJC organisations have in that they have little or no trading history. One of the reasons that I set up MKJC as a business with a bank account seperate from either my business or Concrete Circus was that if I were to rn a BJC I would have trading hstory and accounts over several years, as each year has made a small profit this makes MKJC a much better looking company than one started that year.

Nigel

Orinoco - 3/28/2014 19:32 - Parent #

even so I would still have to learn a hell of a lot that has already been learnt by someone else.

Your comment suggests that you don't want to learn the skills that someone else has already done. By this are you suggesting that the past organisers should have to do task X again & again? Where does their involvement end? The surest way to put off future organisers is to create a culture where future commitment is expected. Or have I misread that & you are saying that the much talked about consultancy service that a central organisation could provide is not enough? Can you say precisely what would be enough?

People talk about ADVICE (burst of choral music) as if it is some all conquering magical weapon. Advice is just an opinion & by its very nature will lack details specific to a future festival's situation. I think there is an expectation among many that a large central organising body distributing ADVICE (burst of choral music) will make organising a BJC easier. This is delusional, you can't reduce organising a festival into a painting by numbers kit.

After all the advice has been given someone needs to make a decision & that is what organising anything is all about. Ooh, hold on I have a quote from the other God Emperor about that:

The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices ... [that] usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems ... A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors ... [Good administrators] depend on verbal orders. They never lie about what they've done if their verbal orders cause problems, and they surround themselves with people able to act wisely on the basis of verbal orders. Often, the most important piece of information is that something has gone wrong. Bad administrators hide their mistakes until it's too late to make corrections ... One of the hardest things to find is people who actually make decisions.

It's Him - 3/28/2014 23:11 - Parent #

It isn't that I don't want to learn a particular skill or set of skills for running a BJC and in some ways I am ahead of the game having organised one day conventions and been involved in other events. However it is quite easy to make mistakes in many different aspects of organising a BJC and these mistakes are not always obvious. Often you only learn something is a mistake when it is too late to do anything about it. What BJCwiki, jugglingconorg and anything else I am aware of rarely does is say we made this mistake because of this and therefore you might want to do that thing a different way. This is one of the things that is very much missing from the business meetings etc - a proper debrief. I'd suggest the best mechanism to do this would be for someone to sit down with the organisers roughly two weeks after the event and talk through everything. Enough time so that they are closer to being physically recovered but not so much time that minor stuff has been forgotten. Often it is the little things that matter a lot. The passing on of knowledge is critical for improvements. Often when writing stuff down people summarise their opinions, thoughts, concerns etc rather than putting everything out in full and thus most organising knowledge is lost. Verbal advice is often better than written advice because people explain their thoughts better by adding many more words that cover nuances. This doesn't mean that all advice will solve the current problems but better advice reduces the number of starting problems. Please note the straw man arguement about advice is not what I have suggested. 

Also your quote seems to imply that failing to pause to reflect on whether an idea is good or not is the ideal way to administer. Just by giving the extreme counter-example doesn't imply that the other extreme is good. Certainly in many situations my first thought about the direction in which to do something has turned out to be the least effective solution and spending more time thinking and consulting has led to better solutions.

Nigel

Orinoco - 3/29/2014 13:07 - Parent #

Sorry didn't mean to suggest that was the point you were making, which is why I put it in a new paragraph & prefaced it with 'People', by people I am mostly referring to comments I've read on Facebook but also heard in person.

I like the debriefing idea because it is something that won't interfere with the organising in the run up to an event & could provide a useful resource that future organisers can choose to use or not. I don't see any reason why this would require an organisation though. I completely agree that we don't discuss mistakes enough. I was a bit annoyed at the 2013 meeting when the loss was announced & put down to, "inexperience & mistakes", someone behind me asked, "well, what were those mistakes?" but this important question was never answered. I appreciate that no one wants to bring up sore points while the organisers are at their most frazzled, but unfortunately the business meeting at the end of the festival is the best time when most interested people are together in one place to discuss it.

mike.armstrong - 3/28/2014 13:54 - Parent #

SNIP some good points. But:

Some BJCs make a profit some don't.

Undeniably

Partially this is due to what happened the year before and how people reacted to that. Partially it is due to uncontrollable issues (like weather, where the EJC is etc.).

Yep

A long term controlled group handling the finances of the BJC would help to even out these irregularities so we don't have the situation where the organisers face heavy debts for their limited company.

Eh? How? Any group can be unlucky, make mistakes or succomb to those uncontrollable issues. Having that group around for the longterm doesn't make that any more or less likely!

peterbone - 3/28/2014 14:25 - Parent #

I guess he means that with a single organisation money can be saved during good years to cover the bad ones.

It's Him - 3/28/2014 18:04 - Parent #

I did indeed. This presupposes that the bjc is profitable in the long term and that losses can be covered. 

There are people who have gained financially by organising the BJC who might not be happy with a body over them taking their potential earnings. There are people who wouldn't want to be a trustee/board member of an organisation where others are responsible with the day to day finances and there is the potential of them having real problems if the bjc makes a loss. There are lots of possible problems and lots of ways of organising things but a proper structure of the BJC organisation would be beneficial long term in many ways.

Nigel

Orinoco - 3/28/2014 12:56 - Parent #

This. I think it was 2008 when there was a suggestion to tie the BJC to some youth funding organisation with a lot of accompanying obligations which went down in flames spectacularly.

I thought the British Juggling Association was a fudge to get around a licensing law in 1997 that only lasted a year, or was there another BJA?

mike.armstrong - 3/28/2014 13:47 - Parent #

I may have the name wrong, this comes from my early days of attending conventions; before I was more involved in the scene.
The organisation that I'm remembering was there for continuity from one year to another and to provide a trading history. Each team took it over (I believe as new directors of the limited company) from the previous team. Which was fine and dandy while there was a surplus...but which volunteers in their right mind would take on the previous year's debts as a liability before starting their own event?
That's why I believe that the links need to be loose.