Dear List, OK...now you have to listen to a little bit of chest-thumping! This past Friday and Saturday, at a small hotel in Des Plaines IL, we (the Chicago Chapter) produced the Central East Regional Seminar, "The Whole Piano," with nearly 100 attendees present. We had two classrooms...2, that's right...and divided the group into two groups of 50. One group started in Classroom A for the day, the other in Classroom B for the day...then the next day they switched rooms. So...no running around, no deciding what you had to miss...everything there for your edification. Saturday luncheon and banquet were included in the registration, hotel rooms were at an affordable rate and the hotel restaurant was very good...both luncheon and banquet boasted excellent food. This was a bit of a gamble and we were told that we shouldn't count on more than 50...so we busted our butts to get the word out that we were going to host an EVENT. It seems to have been successful. Dave Andersen and Dale Erwin team-taught an all-day class in one room...and yes, it WAS as good as that sounds! In the other room, Bob Marinelli and Anne Garee did a half-day class, followed in the afternoon by the irrepressible Wally Brooks, then Paul Revenko-Jones from our own Chapter. And believe me when I say that a good time was had by all! (Oh, and we had testing, too...four new RPTs as a result and several others one test closer to that goal.) Now, to get a tad more specific, Dale and Dave are a natural pairing of instructors...it's so very obvious in that class that they have a relationship of total honesty and trust and that while their styles differ (in very complementary fashion), they are on exactly the same page concerning their goals. It was a revelation, quite literally, for several veteran techs that I spoke with...they said they had never heard these things before and that problems they'd had suddenly began to take on some meaning. I heard not one complaint, no muttering in the hallway...strangely enough, even about the power failure between the last two class sessions! We just rode over it. Bob Marinelli and Anne Garee presented a class that appeared to be heavy on the math...I always shudder at that, personally...and proceeded to enlighten everyone with how easy and how effective it is to weigh off action components when making decisions about parts. 50 techs at a time hanging on every word...and gaining much-needed help! Wally Brooks followed, with his characteristically laid-back approach to giving everyone the absolute straight skinny on what's out there, what the problems are and what is available to ameliorate those problems. I did hear one person say, "Here comes the commercial"...and after the class that same person said, "I could NOT have been more wrong!" The last period of the day was in the hands of Paul Revenko-Jones, illustrating how agraffes are often the source of tonal problems that seem to defy analysis and what to do about it. In between these two premises came a whole host of pictures, ideas, theories (every one of them seemingly tested by PR-J) and explanations of the all-important WHY. Even with a lack of power on the second day for the beginning of the class, I can assure you that NO one was dozing! In short, this was a stellar faculty presenting extraordinary classes. No, we didn't break even completely...but neither did we hurt ourselves and we had a wonderful time with a sense of cameraderie that surprised us, even though it was what we had hoped for. We spent considerable time (though very little money) marketing this event, targeting Regions that were either within a day's drive of Chicago or toward the east coast where they MIGHT not have chosen to attend the Anaheim convention. Perhaps 100 in attendance doesn't sound like much, but as we'd been told that we probably wouldn't get more than 50...we're happy, the techs attending are happy, the faculty are happy, the vendors did well and for a smallish amount out of our treasury, we've gained many, many friends. Did I say we were happy? OK, end of chest-thumping...we had a MAHvelous time, Dahlinks! Stan Ryberg Barrington IL jstan40 at sbcglobal.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20081015/e336df7b/attachment-0001.html
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