Frequently-Asked Questions
As a public service to the Irish Dance community. The average feis-going family spends a non-trivial amount of money in travel, lodging, food, and entry fees for each one they attend, and other than word-of-mouth there is no other means of helping them spend their budget wisely.
Also, committees can sometimes be too close to their feis to notice problems. An outside observer will often notice things that organizers will miss. I know of two feis committees that have taken action on items I have written up in reviews, and suspect there are a few others that have but haven't admitted to it.
Because Clan Seger didn't go to it. This can be due to one or more of the following reasons:
- We receive multiple negative reports from other feis parents about it. I will not willingly put my family into harm's way just to generate a feis review
- The feis is more than a 16-hour one-day drive (or more than a 24-hour two-day drive) from Dayton, OH. From prior experience, that's about as far as I can go before I drop. Since my mission rules for any feis beyond an 8-hour drive require a mandatory day of crew rest between the drive and the competition (and due to the logistical complexity of a two-day drive), the odds aren't all that good that we'll show up even at feisanna beyond 8 hours drive time.
- There's another feis that weekend at which we are competing
- The feis has either sub-standard adult competitions or none at all
- We have a prior commitment of some sort that weekend (such as a show or one of my Reserve weekends)
- It's November. Between birthday parties and Oireachtas practices, there's no time to go feising.
Because it's the way I think about them. Specifically:
- Organization is the foundation of a feis. You can't just go up to some of your best friends one day and say, "Let's put on a show!" like Mickey Rooney used to in the movies. You're talking an event where you're responsible for the safety and comfort of up to several thousand people. To do a feis well requires lots of planning, coordination, and forethought before anyone ever shows up to dance.
- Schedule is admittedly more of a concern for Clan Seger (with 4 competitors) than it is for the average feisgoing family. I once devoted an entire diatribe to the subject, so I refer you to it if you wish a full treatment on this topic
- Facility. Good ones will be easy to move around, have access to plenty of food and water, and have clean, well-stocked restrooms. Feis facilities should not be a hindrance or a safety hazard to the feis-goer.
- Operations represents how well the feis was actually run. Problems will always happen no matter how well you plan beforehand. Good feis committees can handle unexpected contingencies.
Certainly far more than stream-of-consciousness, I can assure you... :-)
I start with a blank template file. If the feis has a website, simple internet reconnaisance on my part will mean that we leave for the feis with most of the Organizational section and (sometimes) some of the Schedule and Facilities sections already written. The rest on feis day is good old-fashioned news reporting -- Devonna and I observe things throughout the day, supplemented by the occasional question to our children or others.
The drive home is where Devonna will sometimes bounce her observations off of me, ostensibly to keep me awake at the wheel. Once home, I'll whip out the rough draft before Devonna incorporates her notes. She also serves as my sanity check, oftentimes moderating my original draft wording. Once we both agree on it, the review gets scheduled for the next batch of uploads to push out to the server. Reviews will usually be posted the night after the feis concludes unless there is some type of extenuating circumstance (like, for instance, a 16-hour drive) preventing me from doing so.
At the time I started writing feis reviews in 2000, I assumed that dance schools sponsored them. I have since discovered that while some are school-sponsored, some aren't.
In addition, where that level of information was lacking, I had been taking educated guesses based on online listings of which dance schools were located where. After a rather spectacular wrong guess on the 2001 London, ON Feis that inadvertantenly damaged the reputation of an innocent dance school, I have had to re-think this policy. Starting with the 2002 season, I will not be including this information anymore when it is not glaringly obvious who is responsible for a feis.
Force of habit, I guess...
Because.
2.2: You Know What I'm Asking...
I feel there are certain issues in the Irish Dance world that require editorial comment and opinion from someone who has not grown up in that world. Admit it -- haven't you ever felt like venting about something in Irish Dance?
I'm actually rather circumspect with my words online. When you go to the number of competitions per year that Clan Seger does, you discover very quickly how small the ID world actually is. I always dance a tightrope between what I feel needs to be said and who may potentially be reading. The last thing anyone in my family needs is an ADCRG with a fragile ego getting offended by something I wrote just before judging one of us in competition...
Sort of. There are some subjects about which I've written but never published. Here is a representative sample of these, and the reasons why I didn't push them out to the server:
- IDTANA-West's attack on the First Amendment (this was too explosive even for me to handle. See 2.3 above)
- Judging irregularities at the 2001 Midwest Oireachtas (this subject requires more data to see whether this was a one-time-only problem or something more systemic)
- Who really was at fault for the ban on Adult Slow-Speed Hardshoe Competitions (some of my points ended up getting covered/debated/etc. on Adult ID message boards without my assistance)
Use your browser's View Source command. You'll figure it out.
It's a Gaelic word for "statistics," roughly pronounced shtay-druhv
I had a lot of things to explain in as dispassionate and factual a manner as possible, and the writing style of my diatribes (part entertainment, part opinion) would have been inappropriate. The writing style I had to develop getting both my physics degrees, however, was perfect.
- We don't like to whine
- We don't like to boast
- Anyone willing to camp out in the Results Room of a feis with a program and a pencil will be able to figure out how well we did/didn't do
- I feel decoupling Clan Seger's awards (or lack of them thereof) from our writings lends them more authority and believability.
- We don't have a camera lens with a wide enough field of view
It's quicker to type than "the Seger family." It's also a play on my Scottish heritage -- I'm descended from Clan Keith on my mother's side.
No, and here's why:
- For blogs to be truly effective, they require source material. There isn't that much -- online or otherwise -- in the ID world.
- The best bloggers are compulsive writers. I'm not.
- A good blog requires a significant investment in time. Being the only driver in the family, that's a level of commitment I'm not capable of giving at this time.
- I work as an computer programmer in my day job. Why would I want to come home from working with computers all day to work with computers some more?
- Answer 2.3 above applies even more in the case where my writing volume increases.
- Being the only driver in a family with three small and active kids is a significant investment of time after work. Add to that the fact (mentioned in passing in item 4.3 above) that I work with computers all day at my job, and I frequently come home for the night not wanting to have anything to do with the home computer. I'm afraid a lot of the site's fanmail falls into this category -- I think it's important to individually acknowledge all of you who sent it, but there are times I just can't because I'm too spent at the end of the day. For this, I apologize.
- You're trying to pick a fight with me over something I said online. I refuse to enter a battle of wits with an unarmed person (or feis committee).
- Sort of related corollary to the previous bullet: in trying to argue with me about something, you demonstrate to my satisfaction that you completely missed whatever point I was making that set you off.
When we figure it out, we'll let you know.
Seriously though, choosing feisanna with some semblance of a predictable competition schedule goes a long way toward reducing our stress levels. Also helpful are well thought-out family logistics (see our Feis Survival Guide for some of the things we've found useful), preparations, and plans.