My response to Rolf:
Rolf,
Thanks again for another great event!
Here's my 2 cents:
Delay the awards. 4:00 or 4:30 would have been fine. As long as you start exactly at that time, everyone should be happy. Starting after the announced time is frustrating as we could be packing up instead of waiting for the awards to start. The changed times of the cooks meetings and the awards were not appreciated and led to confusion.
As for the printing costs, every other event I have competed in prints the results and are done on time. If you think about it, teams are paying a couple of hundred dollars in entry fees and they expect a "simple" thing like a few pages of printouts not to be a problem. How do other events do it? To suggest that the teams would have to pay an extra $50 is a bit shocking ($2,700.00 to rent a copier/printer for 2 days and 500 sheets of cheap paper?)
You could buy a 23ppm printer/copier for $400, toner for $180 and $20.00 worth of paper for a total of ~$650. It would take about 30-45 minutes to print the sheets.
As for the collating and stapling, you have a number of volunteers and it's only 54 packets. Most printers can collate so all you have to do is separate by team and staple.
I would look into a printouts sponsor! Have their logo/website/phone number (pre?)printed on each sheet! Bottom or the whole back of the sheet. Have them supply the printer/copier and the pre-printed paper, too! I would suggest a local merchant that would benefit from the departing teams on Sunday: "Stop in for a [free/discounted/2-fer] item on the way home!!" Just an idea to consider. If a merchant, they need to have a large parking lot to accomodate the trailers, etc.
See you next year!
