Paul Swoord Exeutive Direcor
From the Executive Director
Greetings to you all! I hope you are all having a very successful & prosperous contest season. While you all are bustling with the final push to summer, the MMEA Executive Board has been busy evaluating the past in-service/workshop in order to continue to bring you quality programs, collaborative opportunities, and to ensure the growth of quality music education in Missouri. At the conclusion of each in-service/workshop, the Executive board reviews the conference from multiple perspectives. MMEA, along with the staff of Tan-Tar-A will discuss the overall operation of the conference, how the concerts and clinics functioned, and if there are any improvements or opportunities we can employ. Then, less than a month after the conference, the Executive Board, MMEA staff, and your elected area Vice-presidents meet to start planning for next year’s conference. In addition, we carefully review the comments and feedback provided by you, the membership, through the survey and all other correspondence submitted. As your advocates, we feel your comments are imperative for us to continually strive toward providing our membership the foremost professional development experience possible.
While you are plugging away this busy season, I want to take a moment to acknowledge and elaborate on an area that has received much discussion in recent years regarding MMEA’s present conference location. First of all, as you can imagine with roughly 1800 members, nearly 50 guest clinicians, 460 state group participants, and a foot traffic of nearly 10,000 performing members, parents, chaperons, guests there are many thoughts, opinions and voices to take into consideration. Those figures are not even taking into account the exhibitors who come to enhance our conference! I can assure everyone that the MMEA board is well aware of our present limitations.
summer 2017 |
www.mmea.net
However, what you may not know is there is much more than just space and convenience involved in the planning and implantations of our conference. One of the most important factors is COST to not only the association but to our membership.
I will be brief with my breakdown and overview concerning the cost operations of putting on a conference such as ours as this could easily become a long mind-numbing novel, full of facts, figures and stats.
As you well know, our in-service workshop/ conference is much more than a few meeting rooms with presenters. We offer our membership concerts, rehearsals, receptions, clinics, and exhibits. As you can imagine, the logistics of those experiences must also be considered. Be assured several larger venues have been thoroughly investigated and while the location is a small part of the equation, the single overriding factor is the difference in cost that was quoted to the association.
Accommodations Of course, everyone knows guest rooms are going to be higher, in some cases, these rates we were quoted ranged between 20-30% higher. The tax rates were about 3-4% higher. In addition the cancellation policies are at a much higher rate. MMEA is also required to lock in an agreed room total, which, should we fall short, the association is responsible for the difference. This agreed rate also impacts our compensation ratio used to support our clinicians, Hall of Fame family members, All-State conductors etc.
See SWOFFORD, pg. 12 11
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