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Bob
Chapter Coordinator
4098 Posts |
 Posted - 07/09/2005 : 8:02:10 PM
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Thank You to all who participated in the 2005 Pond Tour. Especially those of you who volunteered or put your pond on the tour! Overall the event went smoothly and we raised $3,000.00 for the ReStore with over 300 participants.
Results for the Raffle winners will be posted on Monday!
We appreciate your feedback to help us make next years event even better. If anyone would like to participate in next years Tour on Madison's West side or help us run and plan the event, we welcome all the volunteers we can get!
We had some errors in the map as Mapquest returned a North on BB which should have been East. Stop 13 was submitted with the wrong address and we were not notified until after printing. We tried to correct the error by coming up with the Secret Pond Stop (good luck on winning the pond kit everyone, over 200 made to that location!). We added the stickers to all 800 maps late into the night on Friday, however we did not realize this altered the directions to Pond 14 as the directions were written from stop to stop. Next year, we may try to include an overall fold out map, if we can afford it! My company put over $8,000 dollars into this years Tour and simply could not afford the extra cost. Maps which we shrunk to 8 x 11 were not legible. Do you have any suggestions of map printing you would like us to consider? Please post them on the message board if so! Or better yet, Get Involved Next Year!
We received only about 5 complaints out of nearly 300 guests, but those who complained were somewhat irate about not giving maps away before the tour. We will never give maps out before the tour. Unfortunately, people tend to copy the maps, give out the addresses to friends or bring friends along with them who did not pay resulting in less money being raised for the charity. You have to remember this IS a charity event, we operate this at an expense not a profit. I do not even recoup my expenses for the work or promotion we put into the event. All money is given to the Charity that our NAWGS chapter chooses. We may have suffered from this due to the newspaper printing the addresses to several pond stops in the Home Section. We did appreciate the coverage however, which hopefully added to our fundraising results rather than detracted from them! What we may do next year is not even sell tickets. Nearly all of the tickets sold on Friday and Saturday anyhow! Maps can be purchased at the charity the day of the event. I think we should also post online the pond descriptions and how many ponds will be on the tour so those from out of town can decide whether or not they feel it is worth the drive into Madison. We appreciate any feedback you may have on this!
We were also contacted by the Janesville Tour about allowing the tickets to be interchangeable shortly before the tour. Both clubs thought this would be a good idea as we are both NAWGS chapters participating in a Nationwide Event. WSCAPES had Madison West Ponds on the tour this year, which we did not know until after we agreed. This does conflict with our 2006 Madison West Tour and we did make a point of not including any ponds this year that were very close or in their area. If WSCAPES has Madison East locations on their Janesville Tour next year, we will most likely not be allowing the tickets to be interchangeable because we may extend our tour to 2 days to decrease the congestion at each home. While we said yes, we ran out of time and were unable to get maps to their tour to make them available on Saturday. I think this added more confusion than it did any good. We will discuss and vote on how to work out a beneficial and smoother operation in regards to this at our NAWGS meetings next year. As always your feedback is appreciated!
I hope you all had fun and got a chance to visit some inspirational ponds in our area! Now you have to get home and start digging right? I hope that those of you who were not aware of the ReStore make future purchases and donations to them! Their volunteers work very hard at keeping useable materials out of our landfills!
We would love to see all of you at our next NAWGS Chapter meeting August 25th!
Thank You again everyone we had a great time!!! Special thanks to Jen at the ReStore, Habitat for Humanity, Mark and the crew at WOLX, Talk of the Town Pizzeria, Stoughton Garden Center, Madison Block & Stone, Midwest Decorative Stone, Paradise Ponds, WI Pond Shop and Proscapes. Quality Contractors, Garden Centers and Suppliers are a benefit to the Ponding Community and the Industry as a whole!
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!
Bob Wambach
Pond and Patio, LLC
NAWGS Madison Chapter Coordinator
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Edited by - Bob on 07/10/2005 2:12:39 PM |
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hppondandpatio
Admin
5853 Posts |
Posted - 07/11/2005 : 09:46:45 AM
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We recieved some suggestions and questions by way of fax so I thought I would post them for all to read along with our reply to them.
I am not a member, in fact I had never heard of NAWGS at all. But, I read about your pond tour in the Wisconsin State Journal, and convinced my husband and son (age 30) we should try the tour. My husband purchased 3 tickets on Friday at the ReStore, and that was the first we heard about having to go back there on Saturday morning to turn in out tickets, but just to get the maps for the tour.
What we may do next year is not even sell tickets. Nearly all of the tickets sold on Friday and Saturday anyhow! Maps can be purchased at the charity the day of the event. I think we should also post online the pond descriptions and how many ponds will be on the tour so those from out of town can decide whether or not they feel it is worth the drive into Madison. We appreciate any feedback you may have on this!We will never give maps out before the tour. Unfortunately, people tend to copy the maps, give out the addresses to friends or bring friends along with them who did not pay resulting in less money being raised for the charity. Also, by requiring you to get your maps at the ReStore, it meant people would have to go there and would see what the charity was about, therefore raising awareness, not just money for the charity.
What I don't get, what I really, really don't understand is.... Why do you stress so much about people possibly copying the maps and giving copies to friends who don't pay for the tour, when the info was all available online anyway.
While we do appreciate the coverage of the Tour by the Wisconsin State Journal, we did not wish for the addresses to be printed, though we should have communicated this better with the reporter. I am assuming this is the information you are referring to as being online, since that information was never posted on any of our sites.
My suggestions for future tours would be:
1. If the tour remains a one day tour, and you are going to make everyone start out at the store, why not use the plastic wrist bands (like the waterparks do) That way when visitors arrive at a particular home, it would be easy to identify anyone who did not have a wristband. And they could not be swapped or used twice since they need to be cut with scissors or whatever to remove.
This is a great idea! We will put this on the parade voting site so we can poll others and see if they like that idea too. Also, after looking at the polls so far it seems that extending the tour to 2 days is what people want so we will definitely be looking into that. We would also probably want to have volunteers at the stops to check wristbands, as we can't require the pond owners to stay there, they like to go on the tour as well. We can't stress enough that we need more volunteers for this event. Maybe if we extend the event to 2 days people will be willing to volunteer for 1 of the 2 days and do the tour on the other day.
2. Or, use the clear plastic name tag type pin on badges instead of tickets. Instead of each persons name they could have your initials, (NAWGS), the year, a ticket # for a raffle, etc. And they could easily be color coded differntly from year to year. Granted, I suppose within the time restraints of the tour, people could "share" the same badge, but I bet this would be possible only on a very limited basis again if the tour were to remain one day. We started at 10:45 and finished at the 13th of 14 at 4:30. With about a 1/2 hour stop for lunch at the pizza place. We didn't have time to get to the pond in Fitchburg.
The problem with plastic name badges is that they are very expensive, and as we had already put $8,000 in, with less than $500 from other contractors and compnaies, it was/is definitely not in the budget. And in the event that we extend the event to 2 days, badges could be shared.
3. My next suggestion would require at least one volunteer at each location (in addition to a homeowner or someone to talk about the pond/waterfall and answer questions) If you had a volunteer at the front of each home to approach people as they arrived, armed with a paper punch, you could then have a larger ticket with the #'s of each site along the outside border of the ticket. If the ticket was punched at each location then everyone arriving would need to show their ticket and have it punched. In this way, even if the tour expanded to 2 days there would not be a problem with people "sharing" a ticket or map. This is the way the Parade of Homes and Parade of Condos have handled their tickets for years and it works quite well.
This is another good idea, but we would need many volunteers for this. Getting people to volunteer these days seems to be harder and harder to do. We ran this years event with only 2 volunteers. We had to recruit family to help. We can't possibly cover the houses with employees. We can't affored to pay all those hours in addition to the hours they have worked during the week, plus we just don't have near as many employess as we do pond stops.
4. Or, instead of issuing on ticket, each person, when paying for the tour, would recieve a packet of tickets (possibly color coded) or at least with the location printed on it. Again a volunteer would collect a ticket at each location for each person approaching the site (preferably soon after exiting their cars) This may even go faster for the volunteer than the punching tickets and again, no way for people to not pay an then participate in the tour. Cheaters would be obvious.
Again, this raises the issue of cost, all those tickets, especially differnt colors, would be very costly. The other issue, as discussed above, is with finding volunteers. Another problem may be with peoplelosing tickets, especially if it becomes a 2 day event.
*** And , suggestions 2,3 and 4 could all work with advance ticket sales, including providing maps.
Other comments about the tour:
Why, when you go online to vote for favorites, are only 11 of the sites listed? My favorite's not even listed. At first I thought maybe the Do It Yourself ponds were not included, but on closer examination, that doesn't seem to be the case either.
We have corrected that problem already. The voting site was posted before some of the later submits came in. We have updated it to include everyone now.
Our only "bad" experience was at Madison Block and Stone. The young man there about 4pm was very uninformed in general and rather abrupt. We asked about the heavy aqua blue granite that was supposedly used (as nothing looked aqua blue to us) and he just snapped something about we must be mixed up with some other site and then walked away. Not a good impression at all!
First, sites are not required to post people at the pond to answer questions. Second, the name aqua Blue granite comes from the quarry from which it was taken, not its color. At Madison Block and Stone, the rock is most likely called Nightshadow.
At one site in late morning, no one was in the yard at all. We could see people moving around within the house, but no one came out at all. We happened to be the only visitors at the time. This left us feeling kind of creepy, like we were trespassing or doing something wrong. Not to mention we were unable to offer any praise or ask any questions. I hope this did not happen to too many others, as it was a rather uncomfortable experience.
We do not require pond owners to be present, they have other things to do, or may want to go on the tour. We are happy they are willing to put their pond on the tour, if we required everyone to be present we would have a lot less people willing to put their ponds on the tour.
It might be helpful in the future to note locations may not be handicapped accessable or at least may provide quite a challenge. We experienced a man in a wheelchair that almost wiped out manuvering down a steep tilted embankment. He made it without incedent but about 10 people were watching holding their breath. From where the hill started out, it didn't look like it would be nearly as treacherous as it actually was. And then there was the one with the very very long steep driveway that did have a sign about honking your horn for a ride up the hill, but the sign had blown over and was not visible.
Thank you for that suggestion. We will certainly provide that information in next year's tour.
Well I'm finally done with my comments on the pond tour, except to say we very much enjoyed the tour! Thanks so much, NJT
We thank you for your comments and your participation in the tour. With it being the first year of the Pond Tour we are excited to get your constructive feedback so that we may make next year's tour that much better. We thank you for your understanding and patience with problems that often arise in first year events and we look forward to showing you how much we have improved the tour at next year's West Side Pond Tour. Thank you.
Bob Wambach, CAC
HP Pond and Patio, LLC
NAWGS Madison Chapter |
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Goldfishfalls
Member
USA
9 Posts |
Posted - 07/11/2005 : 11:53:06 AM
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Bob,
Thanks for all your efforts in putting on the Pond Tour. I was very pleased on the numbers of people who came to look at my pond. I gave up keeping track, because I was busy answering questions. I wish McKay would have paid the fee, so I could have had a representative to help with questions. Everyone was very thankful that we opened our yards for the tour.
It appeared to me that all people had maps, so they must have paid for a ticket. I was somewhat concerned when the addresses were shown in the Wisconsin State Journal article. It would have been difficult, without additional help, to check that everyone had a ticket.
Any chance those with ponds on the tours could have a chance to see all the ponds at some other date?
Again, thanks for all your efforts.
Beth Sweeney |
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Bob
Chapter Coordinator
4098 Posts |
Posted - 07/11/2005 : 8:21:06 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Goldfishfalls
Bob,
Thanks for all your efforts in putting on the Pond Tour. I was very pleased on the numbers of people who came to look at my pond. I gave up keeping track, because I was busy answering questions. I wish McKay would have paid the fee, so I could have had a representative to help with questions. Everyone was very thankful that we opened our yards for the tour.
It appeared to me that all people had maps, so they must have paid for a ticket. I was somewhat concerned when the addresses were shown in the Wisconsin State Journal article. It would have been difficult, without additional help, to check that everyone had a ticket.
Any chance those with ponds on the tours could have a chance to see all the ponds at some other date?
Again, thanks for all your efforts.
Beth Sweeney
Hi Beth,
Thanks again for putting your pond on the tour. I too want to see all the ponds that were on the tour. The only ponds i know are the ones we built. I would certainly like to see yours, Scot's, Johns and more! We will talk about this at the next meeting. I spoke with some other members who would like to make the moonlight tour a members only tour with a barbeque at the last pond. I think it sounds like a great idea. I also would like more contractors to get involved, not only would it help offset my cost, but it would make the tour a true NAWGS & pond community event.
Thanks again
Bob
Bob Wambach, CAC
Head Coordinator
HP Pond and patio, LLC |
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2005 Pond Tour
