[Dave Weinstein]

The inaugural Southeast Squeeze-in will be at The Cottage Inn, in Cashiers, North Carolina, March 5-7, 2004. Let them know you are with the Squeeze-In when you register (and note that they do charge half of the cost up front).

The facility itself consists of a lodge and cabins, all of which can be rented individually. In order to make this logistically possible, the organization for the Squeeze-In is essentially, "It's at this location, on this weekend".

If you rent a cabin (or the lodge), and want to host events, please post events (or space availability) in this thread. If you want to teach or lead an event, but will be staying elsewhere (or live close enough to drive in), please post in this thread looking for someone to host it.

Each cabin includes at least a kitchenette, and most or all include outside charcoal grills. No food is provided at the facility, but there are grocery stores nearby. Finally, Cashiers is in a "dry" county, so you will need to bring any alcohol you plan to consume.

And please, spread the word.

--Dave

[Dave Weinstein]

Sessions at Cedar House (in The Cottage Inn):

Friday night (March 5th): Irish Session (all instruments and skill levels welcome and invited) and kick-off potluck BBQ!

Saturday (time TBD) (March 6th): Irish Slow Session (all instruments)

--Dave

[Helen]

Wow, you've pulled this off. I am soooo impressed.

I hope we can get a midwest Squeeze In sometime.

Helen

[JimLucas]

Helen, on Oct 1 2003, 03:49 PM, said:

I hope we can get a midwest Squeeze In sometime.

How about an "All-American Travelling Squeeze-In", each weekend in a different state, with two weeks off for Christmas & New Years? (Maybe for that we could have a party spanning two weekends in Washington, DC.)

[Helen]

Hey Jim, you're on. I like it. I like it a lot. Course I couldn't eat because I wouldn't be earning any money. But boy could we play.

[Rhomylly]

Helen, any time you want to put together a mid-west Squeeze-in, I'll help!

[Bob Tedrow]

I have obtained permission and cooperation from my wife and daughter. We will be attending the SE Squeeze in.

Bob Tedrow

[Helen]

Hey Rhomylly,

You're on. Great. Maybe other people would be interested in helping us. I think Ken Coles expressed interest once. This might really happen. I'm excited.

Helen

[grumpyhermit]

I'll be accruing vacation round about then, and may actually have an instrument and my car working well, for a change. Since I live in NC, maybe I'll be able to attend and get a chance to listen, at any rate. Since I at this point plan to buy a Jackie from Concertina Connection, maybe Bob Tedrow will consent to look at it and write a review for Concertina.net. Just a thought, and I'm not committing, but I thought I'd at least put myself down as a possible.

Bob G. Evans.

[Eric Root]

Hey, Dave, do you know what Cashiers may have in the way of inexpensive campsites within easy commute of events? If we went down, it most probably be in a camper.

-Eric Root (and Tina Liza Jones)

[Dave Weinstein]

Eric Root, on Oct 4 2003, 11:07 AM, said:

Hey, Dave, do you know what Cashiers may have in the way of inexpensive campsites within easy commute of events?

I did a little quick checking and I found Singing Waters

Also, I found a thread discussing RVs and Cashiers, and the nearby town of Highlands, NC.

There are also KOA campgrounds in Asheville, NC, which is about an hour away.

--Dave

[Eric Root]

Dave Weinstein, on Oct 4 2003, 11:14 PM, said:

Eric Root, on Oct 4 2003, 11:07 AM, said:

Hey, Dave, do you know what Cashiers may have in the way of inexpensive campsites within easy commute of events?

I did a little quick checking and I found Singing Waters

Also, I found a thread discussing RVs and Cashiers, and the nearby town of Highlands, NC.

There are also KOA campgrounds in Asheville, NC, which is about an hour away.

--Dave

Thanks, Dave!

If we stayed in Asheville, we could crash with friends, but would have to leave jams in shape for the drive

Thanks for your work, one or both of us will be there. I would like to lead some sort of workshop in playing old-time Appalachian tunes on the English concertina.

-Eric

[RP3]

Congrats Dave,

As a long-time student at the NHIS, I have really missed the Northeast Squeeze-In since we moved the date and location of the class. Your initiating the Southeast Squeeze-In less than 75 miles from my home in Tryon is a Godsend!

I will be making my reservations ASAP. Looking forward to some serious free-reed overload and meeting some new folks.

See ya there!

Update: Just made my reservation in the Box Bend cottage. Since it has a little living area and a couple of fireplaces, I hope to host an anglo slow jam and maybe a class for slow airs on the anglo concertina. English concertinas and button boxes will be welcome to join in too!

Ross

This post has been edited by RP3: 06 October 2003 - 08:39 AM

[Dave Weinstein]

Updates:

The Cottage Inn has extended the checkout time to 1pm on Sunday, which will allow us to end the Squeeze-In at noon, and still have time for people to pack and checkout.

Questions:

I'm working on a web page now, and I'll be plugging in events as people set them up. What time slots sound good?

Right now, I'm thinking the following slots:

Friday:

8pm-10pm
10pm-Midnight
Midnight-2am
2am-Until

Saturday:

8am-10am
10am-Noon
1pm-3pm
3pm-5pm
8pm-10pm
10pm-Midnight
Midnight-2am
2am-Until

Sunday:

8am-10am
10am-Noon

This wouldn't mean that there would necessarily be things going on during those slots, just that they would fit nicely into a chart of what would be happening where.

What do people think? Too many slots? Are two hour chunks too small or too large?

--Dave

[David Barnert]

I'd expect 2 hours per session is more time than you want. At the NESI, sessions were an hour with half hour breaks between (IIRC 9-10, 10:30-11:30, 1-2, 2:30-3:30, 4-5) with a choice of three or four events in each slot. This gives flexibility for sessions to run overtime if necessary, but doesn't force session leaders to have to fill long slots.

[Richard Morse]

Actually, the NESI had 7 workshop locations x 5 time periods = 35 "slots" which were filled with 28 workshop offerings. Some of those workshops had as few as 3 attendees and some had a couple dozen.

That was for Saturday. Sunday had fewer workshops and fewer people as some folk came just for the Satur-day. We had a total of 130-some people at the event.

One of the problems we've had is that there can often be two or more concurrent enticing workshops.... Our plan to lengthen things further into Sunday should help out with this as there could be duplicate or continued workshops.

While our 1-hour slots seems to be a good lenth of time, some workshops (especially the band workshops) seem to be wanting a longer slot. Originally we had some 1 1/2 hour slots which seemed more appropriate (anything longer didn't seem to make sense and folks needed a break by then anyway), but we went to the 1-hour chunks as that seemed to fit most workshops best. Any workshop that really needed to be longer cold be 2 slots long and those could decide whenever to take a break (or end early) as they chose.

Having the half-hour between the workshops works out great for winding things up and getting to the next one. It also allows folks to just get together and jam, work on stuff from workshops, bone up for the concert, munch, nap....

My personal feeling is that I prefer events which are relaxed and low-key. Lots of room for choice. Making the schedule more open allows for this flexibility. This is not to say that you can't change things to fit circumstances - alter things on the fly if need be. We're still fiddling with and fine tuing with schedule after 14 years (not only during the weekend but also in the planning for next years)!

You mentioned a lot of time slots but now how MANY locations. The number needed will depend on how many folk attend and how diverse are their interests. It's nice to have a choice of different sizes and characters of spaces for workshops in order to meet the particular needs and feeling of each workshop. For instance, we usually have a lot of the Irish (tunes, ornamentation, singing, etc.) workshops in the bar, the repairs (bellows making, action adjustment, tuning, etc.) workshops in a well-lit indoor space with a big central table, slow jam (tune learing, swapping, composing, etc.) outdoors under a tent or maybe on the porch), sight reading (or singing, storytelling) someplace indoors where there's no breeze and it's easier to hear), gospel/shapenote (for the ambiance) in the chapel or in one of the gazebos.....

[Dave Weinstein]

Richard Morse, on Oct 8 2003, 09:27 AM, said:

You mentioned a lot of time slots but now how MANY locations. The number needed will depend on how many folk attend and how diverse are their interests.

The Cottage Inn is a complex of what are, effectively, small houses. In order to make the event scalable, and to eliminate the risks of someone having to risk or spend a lot of money to secure a venue, the scheme I fell back on is "a whole bunch of small house sessions, right next to each other".

So, the number and size of the locations are based on (1) how many people rent cottages or the lodge and (2) how many sessions those people are willing to host (even if they aren't leading them).

All I'm doing from a logistical standpoint is coordinating the information (who wants to teach or lead what, who is willing to host, what is where, that sort of thing), and the events that my wife and I will be hosting in the cottage we've reserved.

The reason I asked about time slots was to setup a chart of what would be where and when (I feel like I'm writing an Abbot and Costello routine) for the web page.

So, with all that said...

Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night, and Late Night (as slots) would give us a total of 8 time slots (two on Friday, five on Saturday, and one on Sunday), but they would be very big. More finely grained time slots would give us more leeway not to schedule things against each other (depending on how many people come).

What do people think about leaving it as "Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night, and Late Night" for the moment, and drilling down to more finely grained scheduling if we get enough people who want to lead and/or host events to justify it?

--Dave

[JimLucas]

Dave Weinstein, on Oct 8 2003, 09:21 AM, said:

What do people think about leaving it as "Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night, and Late Night" for the moment, and drilling down to more finely grained scheduling if we get enough people who want to lead and/or host events to justify it?

Only this: Folks in the Afternoon slot -- and the Morning if it gets started early enough -- will want some sort of break in the middle, for coffee or whatever. If you plan such breaks for a specific time, then the folks in the different groups can mingle, and then return to their groups. An added benefit/danger is that some folks might want to switch groups in the middle, especially after sharing notes over coffee.

(The "edit" was to correct a typo.)

This post has been edited by JimLucas: 08 October 2003 - 01:07 PM