The First Event.

I will not say too much about the event here as you can read about it on the 2002 Wadfest site, but more a sort of highlights that we learnt from.

After a bit of dispute over the size of the field, or more to the point definitions of all the field, we managed to get everybody in. Friday was decided to be a relaxed day with everybody getting to know one another. Saturday was the main day and the programme went to pot as we tried to get things done. Sunday was quite a relaxed morning with just the auction, and then somebody suggested a photo shoot.

What was learnt.

1) When booking a site get in writing costs and what exactly the site consist of.
2) Organise a programme for the Friday for the early arrivers.
3) Delegate, I tried doing everything and ended up with a lot of items being missed.
4) Ask for volunteers, people were willing to help but didn't know that it was needed.
5) Give certificates out as soon as possible to the event, the next day people have forgotten the excitement of winning.
6) Do the photo shoot on the Saturday when the maximum number of people are still around.
7) When sorting out a programme of events make it flexible so items can be added.

2003 and Onwards

A New Venue is Chosen.

Due to the lack of amenities of the 2002 site, and lack of the space we were allocated, it was decided very early on that we would need a bigger site, The Nottingham Rugby Club was approached but turned us down after several months, in the mean time I had a word with The Cunning Artificer about my worries, and he suggested looking at commercial sites. I was a bit apprehensive about doing this because of cost, but though that there was nothing to loose as it was just a few emails to send out.

This proved to be the best solution to the problem, as one of the first sites I wrote to was Callow Top, after discussing my needs and expected number of campers I was informed that they had a Rally site that was connected to the camp site, and that if I booked it we could use all the camp site amenities as well, these included toilets, showers, swimming pool etc. Great but what of cost?

After some negotiation on both side, i.e.. If you do this I will charge that, I managed to get the price to a level that we could work on, although day visitors proved to be a bit of a stumbling block to start with, but again after some negotiation an amicable agreement was reached.
Benefits of the New Site.

As stated in the paragraph above, it has plenty of amenities that make for a more civilised weekend, it also has room to expand, at a rough guess the site will take 1000 units, but I have been informed that if we need more space they have another six fields that we can use, that means Waddy will not have to panic about space until we get in access of 3000 tents wanting to be pitched on the site, and if that happens I will probably have other things to panic about.

During the Town Twinning of Ankh-Morpork the discussion turned to the Wadfest, and a spin off of that discussion was that we required a shield to commemorate highlights of the first Event, the motto had been decided on, "An Event for Real People",
Prof. Artley helped with the Latin, "Casus pro veris populis", the main events that happened over the weekend that were to be remember on the shield were, Luggage Wars, Loz's Camp Fire, the Marquee, and Thud, a W was added to represent Wadfest, John Pagan worked on the art work and the finished article I am sure you will agree looks stunning.

Bernard was approached about doing a model of the shield, and has decided to produce it as a PYO piece for the Wadfest this year (2003), along with an Event piece.

Because of having a shield it was also discussed about an opening ceremony and again this was decided to be based on happenings from the first Event.

So as you can see the Wadfest is starting to mature and hopefully over the coming years will bring a lot of enjoyment to all those that attend.

As each Wadfest takes place I will add to this page so future Wadfesters can see how the Event developed.

2003 less traumatic, but still some hiccups.

Based on what I leant at the 2002 Wadfest I decided this year to try to let other people run a few of the items in the programme, big mistake, the name of the game is to let other people run all the items.

Yet again things did not go according to plan, Dave could not get his hands on a generator, but I learnt from Terry, if you can't do anything about it forget it, with this in mind I told Dave "No Worries" that is a lovely sentence.

The main thing I learnt this year Delegate, and after delegating let them get on with it. To this end I aim to just oversee what is happening at Wadfest in 2004 and leave it to others to run things, we will see what happens.

Talking of 2004 with this being the third Wadfest things are starting to settle down and get organised earlier. Lupine set the theme way back in July 2003 for Wadfest 2004, Koom Valley and I aim to put a lot more effort into decorating the camp site.