Chris Schafer's CVC Report:

Overall I believe that my job went well. I had issues Saturday with the VIA luncheon, many of which could have been fixed by communication on my part before the conclave, such as an email to all lodge chiefs reminding them about the VIA luncheon and to pick their VIA. Also, the location was not very good, it was the best seating location outside, and therefore was taken by the first people to eat. We either should have roped it off, or done the VIA luncheon in a  classroom. I believe that Vigil Breakfast went very well, but I still have many ideas for improvement.

As a first time CVC, I often was confused with what was required of my job. It turned out not to be too hard, but it would have been so much easier if I had contact info someone who had done my job before. So I believe that we should give each CVC the contact info of the person who did their job during the previous conclave so that they would be able to ask them questions.
I also have many ideas for improvement my specific events.

For VIA Luncheon:
Hold it inside in a secluded area
Email all the Lodge Chiefs before the Conclave so that they know to show up to it, and where to go.

For Vigil Breakfast:
Have a set start time, and a 'doors close' time, so that timing for the event can be set.
Have a little flier/slip of paper for Vigils to pick up at check in.
*** Have someone who is actually Vigil do it.

Conclave as a whole went pretty well, but I believe that it could definitely use some improvements. The things that I had the biggest problem with were the times that we had nothing to do when there were things that could have been done. The big one was like 6:00 - 8:00 during the patch auction. The big problem I had with this is that while we had all this extra time, we didn't have the Sports Competitions between the lodges.

Also I had an issue with Ceremonial Evaluation. As a ceremonialist, I felt that the judges were not well trained. While many knew what they were doing, they all had a different way of evaluating. The issues I had are as follows:
Some line checkers didn't do a word for word checking of the ceremonialists. In my opinion the line checker should have his back turned on the ceremony and should ONLY be checking the lines.
Some judges had preferred ways of doing certain motions (such as stringing the bow) and wanted to count down ceremonialists for not doing it the way that they expected it to seen done.

These complaints are not the judges fault necessarily, the issues were a result of the lack of a true 'evaluation training' class. This next year we need an evaluator who has done competition judging (preferably at the national level) to teach a class on how to evaluate. This would really make it so all ceremonies could be judged equally.

I also felt that we definitely need a good Sports Conclave Vice Chief this next year. I truly missed Volleyball.

This year's Conclave definitely went well, but I believe that next year's Conclave could go even better!

Chris Schafer
Special Events Conclave Vice Chief