By and large, I, personally, fear Ren-Fairs demos as a recruiting tool. I
This is not to say you can't get quality members from a ren-fair, just that
I believe that the SCA is a backdrop to fun that we make, not a place where
have always had the impression that the average dream of most Ren-Fair
operators/committees/whatever is to create Elizabethan Land (to be tucked
right in there between Fantasy Land and Adventure Land). This is OK, since
most ren-fair attendees are there to buy a day's worth of prepackaged fun
and then go home. This is not a relationship into which we can shove
ourselves and expect to be welcome.
I know of too many groups where they have a whole lot of "ren-fair members"
who they only see at their own events, who consider themselves to be more
customers than what I'd think of as members, and who expect to be
entertained because they paid their site fee by God! (Did that just slide
into a rant? Oh well. You gotta go with what you're good at.)
we go to purchase pre-made fun. I'm willing to share in someone else's fun,
but I'm not interested in _being_ someone else's fun. Also, by and large,
places where you go to buy pre-made fun generally take a dim view of you
making your own fun.
>Demos are how we educate. And a very large part
>of our raison d'etre is that we *are* an educational group.
I'm not sure that I'm willing to buy into demos as a serious educational
>We don't just do what we do by and for ourselves. We're here as much for
When did having a little slip of blue paper in your wallet make you not part
Want to learn what a university is teaching? You become a student at that
tool. I think your average SCA demo teaches more about the middle ages than
watching Rich Little (anyone remember him) do his impression of Richard
Nixon teaches you about US foreign policy in the 60s and 70s, but I'm not
sure I'm willing to give us much more credit than that. SCA web pages (not
so much our corporate, group or kingdom web pages, but member pages) do more
for education than our demos could ever hope to do.
the
>public as we are for our own enjoyment of one another.
of the public? Are you sure you filled out the right waiver and stuff and
aren't currently AWOL from the Navy? :) We are part of the public, we
educate ourselves, ergo we educate the public.
university. Can we realistically hold ourselves to a higher standard than,
say MIT?
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