Coming Events

[Bill Edwards]

Dear All

Mike Willis has done a fantastic job in compiling our Coming Events for many years now, and I wish to thank him for his fantastic efforts in what is a tedious task - Thank You Mike!!

However, Mike has decided that he is stepping down from this task. Comments from members about the lack of events have hastened his giving up the task. I understand his point, it's difficult to maintain enthusiasm for a tedious task when you get criticised for it

We now need to find a way forward. I am keen to see a list of coming events in the forum in some form. I don't get World's Fair and cannot commit more time, so I will not be taking over. It IS a tedious, time consuming, thankless task and I suspect that I will struggle to get someone to take it on.

There are alternatives I've thought of and you, the members may have some more suggestions??

1) Allow members to add events to the current database. It's fairly easy to do and if every member could be encouraged to add events they are aware of, we could produce a useful database without any one member doing all the work. The downside is that we would lose the consistency with data entry and risk errors creeping in.

2) Move to a forum based solution. Perhaps 12 "Coming Events" forums, one for each month with a template for members to add events they are aware of. This solution wouldn't require members to use a different part of the software as option one would. The downsides would be the same as above. Also there is is no "sort" option.

3) Use the calendar. Easy to do but with the disadvantages as above. Also "messy" as the Calendar is only really for a small number of entries.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

All the best

Bill

[Gary Witcomb]

A Very Big Thank You to Mike Willis for running/updating/Maintaining the coming events section for so many years, this has to be one of the fundamental parts of the forum, so we must find a suitable way for communicating coming events which for all the Traveling Enthusiasts was a great resource and if we don't find a way of reporting events many Enthusiasts will miss out on events and spoil there enjoyment of OUR HOBBY !!

If we cant find a replacement person to carry on the great work Mike did then I would be in favour of your 2nd Option Bill, the 12 coming events forums but I hope someone will come forword

As for using the Worlds Fair for coming events, I believe Mike supplied this list as well, using the coming events he had compiled here so this could disappear as well !!!

I make no apology for my next comment, if there was any criticism of the coming event reference lack of events listed, well the Forum membership was has to take full responsibility for that as it was up to members to supply the info to Mike to include, this is/was never Mike responsibility to find the events for the membership his job which he has done to the best of his ability was to collate and list supplied info

[GeorginaBailliesNumber1Fan]

Yes thank you very much Mike for all the work you have put into the coming events section of the forum.I would love to give this ago myself but fear that i will loose a lot of my contacts this year due to not visiting as many fairs as i have in recent years,also i am not a casual worker anymore due to pysical illness and i am having a change of career from March 2015 see off topic(Ghosts post) for furthur details.

Edited January 6, 2015 by EA UltraModernSpeedway

[Davey_C]

Quite a few showmen use facebook to advertise where they will be open so i guess we will all have to do some digging in 2015 and forward on what info we find.

Ive used the coming events on here for many years and would like to thank mike for his efforts

[Steve Barton]

I'd like to thank Mike Willis for all the hard work he has done over the years with the Coming Events. Over the years I would not of visited the number of Fairs I have done without the help of Mike's Coming Events. Those people who have commented about the lack of events listed need to step back and think about it ! Today I think it is harder to find events to add to Coming Events than it was a few years back I can remember when the Worlds Fair had TWO Full pages of Grounds to Let advertisements most weeks of the season (it was dead easy to find events then) these days you'll be lucky if you get a quarter of a page of Grounds to Lets Ads. Instead now you have to spend hours looking through Facebook pages looking for Showmen advertising grounds on there.or going through the many Websites that Showmen have to get events off their diary page (if they have one) or contacting Showmen and enquiring about details of their run all of these things Mike Willis has been doing for a long time now to make Coming Events the success it is. These are going to be big shoes to fill and as the season starts to get under way more and more people will miss Mike's Coming Events.

[Shaun Martin]

Many thanks to Mike for the sterling work he has done over the years in compiling the coming events list, so sorry to hear you will no longer be doing this.

In his capable hands it has proved an invaluable resource for many a trip

[Lee Harwood]

I'd also like to add my thanks to Mike for his work on the Coming Events. As others have also said I would not know about half of the fairs I go to without it, and this year it has been especially useful as I have been able to plan in advance and request certain days off from work.

I'd also like to apologise as I remember making a comment about being amazed a certain established bonfire was never listed, which I think came across in a way I didn't mean and I now know the reasons behind that.

As somebody who doesn't have Facebook or get World's Fair I can only rely on this forum or word of mouth whenever I am at a ground and so I really hope that as a forum we can come together and create a good knowledgeable listing of coming fairs. Yes there may be mistakes or changes but this was something that was always said and I'd rather have some information than none at all.

[David Ellis]

I vote for the forum option. We could all post details of events that we know are definately happening (as we've seen posters or the personal knowledge of our forum members).

[GeorginaBailliesNumber1Fan]

Yes i agree with David on that one.

[Bill Edwards]

We have a solution to the problem. Just bear with me a short while whilst I finalise the details