On May 3, 2014, at 3:28 PM, Merle Mceldowney wrote:
...
With the above exception I rarely tried to do matching. I thought
if I
did that I would be falling down a rabbit hole to a place I did not
want to
be.
Merle, could you clarify how you avoided doing "matching"?
Here are some possible interpretations I can think of:
* you booked bands and callers independently (or you booked
the bands [or callers] and someone else booked the callers
[resp. bands] independently) and let the chips fall where
they may. I would consider this to be a kind of "matching",
but done at random rather than based on anyone's opinions
(yours, the callers', or the musicians') about which bands
and callers would or wouldn't work well together.
* You booked the bands [or the callers] and then someone else
matched them up with callers [resp., bands].
* you encouraged performers to offer their availability as
band+caller packages (just as musicians commonly offer
their availability as bands rather than getting booked as
individuals and leaving it to organizers to match fiddlers
with pianists, etc.). This would leave it up to the bands
and callers to "court" each other.
* You booked the callers [or the bands] first and then asked
the bands [resp. callers] about their availability once
you could supply them with info about which callers [bands]
had already been booked for which dates.
* You did something else (and perhaps what I have written
in the bullet items above shows that I have seriously
misunderstood something about the nature of your booking
process and/or about what you mean by "matching").
There are obvious problems with some of the options in my list,
at least in their purest forms, but I hope it gives you some idea
why I'm seeking clarification of what you meant by "... I rarely
tried to do matching."
Thanks.
--Jim
On May 3, 2014, at 3:28 PM, Merle Mceldowney wrote:
In the ten years that I booked dances that happened. I later found
out
that there was a pretty bitter divorce going on between a caller and a
musician. Whoever was booked last was re booked for another night.
If someone told me that they did not want to do it after it was
booked, I
would then offer that person another date, or tell them I would put
them
off for another year. I would not have had too much patience with
much of
it.
The one place I had to pay attention to it was with some pretty hot
southern callers who did not want to call with northern style bands
(one
of the hot southern callers I am thinking of lives in New England) I
needed to oblige that.
With the above exception I rarely tried to do matching. I thought
if I
did that I would be falling down a rabbit hole to a place I did not
want to
be.
Merle
<Chrissy's original query snipped>
