Maybe if they ever switch to just digital photography in a few years then
they can reduce the award prices (I'm not sure they'd want to reduce them,
but if you take out the costs of dealing with film then it's hard to justify
keeping the same price on the awards.)

I can't help wondering if you can't make the same arguments against adding
judging centers that people often make about expanding the number of teams
in sports leagues: you end up diluting the talent and the overall quality
suffers. Will the additional judging centers bring more good judges into
the system, or is the supply of decent judges limited and you're just
spreading them out more?

-danny

p.s. Yes, Art Moore is the Prez :-) He's in our JC so we get to see him
all the time.

"K Barrett" wrote in message
. ..

We go *live* May 3rd. AOS Prez (Art Moore??) will be there and
everything. Whoopdedoo!

I worry about how many computers I'll be able to install eAOS on. I need
3 (minimum). I believe they say they'll allow 5. But I can see that you
are right. They need to relax a bit. I finally registered at orchidweb
for the 'members only' portions of the web page and there's really not a
whole lot there to subscribe to. Heck, I have more articles on
OrchidSafari than they have at AOS! (In their archive section.)

Personally I'm looking forward to the new center. People keep asking me
why I'm changing since Oakland is much closer to me than Sacramento is,
but sheesh. I like the people and I like to judge so if there's an
opportunity, I'm there. I only hope there will be orchids to judge!
(Given an opportunity I'll pull some from the 'show and tell table', heck
why not?)[ with the owner's permission, that is.]

I don't know *what* the AOS is doing anymore. The costs for the magazine
& membership, the costs for *both* the AQ and eAOS, the costs for an award
(one only needs to look at the Pac Central's web page to see how the fee
increase drastically reduced the # of awards over time.) Heck its
expensive. Follow that up with the New York YTimes' article, and we are
back in the days of the 'Landed Gentry' exchanging prized orchids amongst
themselves. You get to be Countess SuE and I get to be Baroness Barrett.

K