As to danny's remark that adding judging centers is like adding professional
baseball teams, I agree. I worry about dilution, too. But the thing that I
can't get past is that Central Valley people just *don't* drive into the Bay
Area. The traffic sucks and its really too far, not in distance but in time
to get there, especially depending on the traffic. That's why they put an
international airport in Sacramento, LOL!! Not because its a hub of
international fervor, but becasue its more convenient to people who live in
the Valley. I figure if you're not going to drive to SFO or OAK to fly out
on a vacation why would you drive there to show an orchid? So I look at it
in terms of outreach. We'll see what happens. I hope we don't fall on our
faces.

Additionally, if you look at the annual shows the Pac Central judges, they
are all in easy driving range for judges who live down the Peninsula. No
one offers to drive to Reno, or Chico or Stockton or Fresno, or any of the
other little societies in the Pac Central region. I'm hoping they'll 'come
out come out whereever they are' and have us judge their shows (or at least
ask for speakers). Who knows? Maybe more societies will form. Like Steve,
he got the ball rolling on a society in upper New York. They meet at a
local restaurant and have maybe 16 members. Maybe the same will happen in
Marysville or Cottonwood or Weed (there'sa thought) or Rob's favorite town,
Yreka.

As to laptop color, I was talking to Greg Allikas and he said the same
thing. Color between monitors is going to be a problem. I thought
photoshopping pics was going to be a bigger problem, but he disagreed. He
was more concerned that everyone's laptop be on the same page. So we'll see
what developes along that front as time goes by. Actually, the idea of a
judge actually springing for a laptop is laughable. I'm getting ticked at
being the only one at a show with one. (Oh! You have a laptop! Can you
look up the parentage for this cross to the 3rd generation and see if any of
the parents have an award? Then give me the AQs and tell me if there are any
pictures? Or does that have pictures on it? What do you mean I should do
my own research? That you are busy trying to judge your own flower? Well! I
never!) I suppose I should toss in a *G* there so anyone reading this years
from now doesn't think I'm a total jerk. [*G*]

I can't remember who developed the eAOS program. I'm out of touch with the
AOS anymore. I know argh, what's his name... ergh the fellow who did the
original AOS award CD [blank]. Anyway, he did a presentation on it for the
Judges' Forum at Santa Rosa. We'll see if they actually update it as
frequently as they say (monthly?? Bi-monthly? Something like that). Would
be cool if its true. I hope they have a better platform than the AOS award
data program. Everyone here hates that thing.

Interestingly, we awarded a Pot Martha Clarke a few days ago in Oakland.
When I received the latest copy of 'the Orchid Digest' (the magazine) I
believe they have the pictures captioned wrong in the Fred Clarke article.
I believe the one with the flares is Martha Clarke and the solid yellow one
is the other Pot. So award pics can help in other ways. But the point that
the AOS pics will never make it out into non-AOS publications is true.

K

Al" wrote in message
news

Digital access to all the award slides is half the battle, in several
different wars, as a matter of fact. And unlike the sanders data, the AOS
award slides are more "proprietary" in nature. It is unlikely that they
will ever show up in programs or publications outside of AOS control.

Once a group of judges sit their lap tops down side-by-side and open the
same picture and see the differences of color that show up on all the
monitors they may consider slide film less necessary than adopting a color
standard for the digital images to make the color as close as possible
when viewed on many different computers. Once there is a color standard
for digital images in place and everybody only looks at the digital
images, slides will go the way of "official portraits"

This new subscription e-AOS thingie is actually pretty cool. Good idea,
who do we credit for thinking of this? And when it doesn't work like we
want it to who can we verbally abuse?


"danny" wrote in message
. ..
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