Rocksoc ball

[Guest]

Rocksock ball, whats that all about then?

[benedict]

THE BALL
OK, OK. I don't get onto this internet thing that often, so thought the details of the Ball were already here. But they aren't, so I'll have to put them here myself.

THE TIME:
Saturday 24th April

THE PLACE:
The Golf Hotel

THE COST:
Dinner tickets £19 (includes 3 course dinner and wine)
Dance tickets £12 (err...doesn't include dinner or wine)

THE TICKETS:
Tickets will be available on (date that's been), from the Committee, by post (cheques payable to Rocksoc can be sent to Rocksoc at the Union...we have a pigeonhole, so

Rocksoc
The Union
Market Street
St Andrews

should get it to us. Include an s.a.e. and we'll send you your tickets.

Also, for those in town, we'll be selling them outside the Union and Library in a little while...we just want our (current and former) members to get the first chance to buy tickets.

WE EXPECT THIS EVENT TO SELL OUT: EVEN IF IT DOESN'T, THERE WILL BE NO TICKETS ON THE DOOR. ORDER EARLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT.

***message***ends****

[hr]

this was posted on this board earlier but for the sake of convenience.

i have no idea what's going to be involved, maybe the committee shall enlighten us soon. not sure if there will be a live band on or not. the previous RockSoc ball was apparently very good, although that was a little before my time.

[benedict]

to add:

RockSoc ball's don't seem to happen terribly often, so it's probably worth attending as it's likely to be a unique event from the stories i've heard of the previous ball.

[Hex]

Aargh, don't let the ball be cancelled!

For those not in the know, supposedly they haven't sold enought tickets yet (17th April) to make the ball viable, and it might all go tits up.

[underworlddreams]

OK - one or two things, then.

Firstly, yes it's true that we may have to cancel the ball. I'm afraid that (while we are subsidising the Ball somewhat) if we don't sell enough tickets, we'll end up bankrupting the society just paying for maybe 30 people to go (since we've reserved a certain number of places/seats and will have to pay for that no matter what.) So what we are saying is that we need all of you to buy yer tickets! We hate pestering you about it, but it's for the members that we put this on, and we really want it to work!

On the other hand, when we get to Saturday night, we will be having a three course meal, hopefully with accompanying music, and a big balls-out rock disco of the kind you never get to see at other balls... Hmmm... too many balls in that sentence - my apologies. A photographer will also be present so that we can have a permanent record of how beautiful we all look in our dresses and suits (boys and girls repectively, probably...)

[hr]They say that if you play a Windows Install CD backwards, you hear satanic messages. That's nothing - play it forwards, and it installs Windows...

[benedict]

You can buy them from the commitee who will be outside the union
between noon and 3pm all next week.

[Guest]

Wonderful.
Check email to discover that ball may be cancelled. E-mail seems to blame rocksoc members for not buying tickets, strange, maybe if they'd been better informed more would've been bought.
Severe lack of posters, reminders sent only to those on the mailing list and tickets being available only at discos apart from this week when you can get them outside the library; this week being the week of the ball.
Great organisation folks.
Hope you can manage to sort out refunds for the large number of pissed off people should the ball be cancelled in a slightly more organised fashion.
And what about all the folks who have booked time off work, hotel rooms and train or plane tickets for the event? Glad I'm not answerable to them.
Great, now I've got to try and think up a backup plan for the weekend, cheers...

[benedict]

have no fear, there shall be a ball. i think.

i agree with some of the points above, but at the end of the day (or year) we are having a ball which doesn't happen every year & i may be correct in believing that it is only the 2nd ball in the societies history. in defence of the committee, they are doing a good job in sitting outside the Union selling tickets this week.

actually i don't know for sure if enough tickets have been sold yet, but going by the amount of people i know who are planning to buy tickets this week, then it should be fine i think. in fact the last i heard, the dinner tickets are fast running out, so if you plan to eat, it'd be best to move in quickly.

[Slash wannabe]

[s]Unregisted User wrote on 15:04, 19th Apr 2004:
Severe lack of posters, reminders sent only to those on the mailing list...


Err i dont think so i've seen a bunch of posters about, people outside the union and even fliers under my door.

[hr]
IMAGE:www.queensofthestoneage.com/images/logo_qotsa.gif

[underworlddreams]

Can I just point out that we endeavor to have everyone who is a member of the society on the mailing list (except those who request to be removed.) How exactly can we publicise it any more than letting our entire membership know more than a month in advance? We have also told the society (over the last month and a half, at least) about the Ball at the end of our fortnightly events. Add that to the general talk of putting on this Ball since the beginning of the year, and I really don't know what else we can be expected to do to publicise!

We are trying our best, and people going around criticising us for it does not do anyone any good. It is down to the society to buy the tickets for this event (which, by the way, the past two committees had gotten pestered to put on, too)... You can hardly expect us to buy them for you - we've made it as easy as any society (barring the KK, probably) can make it to let you buy them.

Slight rant aside, it does seem that we've been getting a better response just recently, with 20 or so tickets having been bought since the (offending?) email went out. Hmmm... Maybe there's a connection there....

[hr]They say that if you play a Windows Install CD backwards, you hear satanic messages. That's nothing - play it forwards, and it installs Windows...

[Mark]

Now then, people... no-one should be upset with anyone.

The message about the possible cancellation of the ball was intended to serve as a warning, not a threat - and it seems to have worked, as loads of people have now started buying tickets. Apologies to anyone who took it differently. As for publicity... sorry, but there've been posters around town, mentions at Rocksoc discos, e-mails, Sinner messages, Livejournal communities, and more for almost two months now. Sorry if you missed any of that. Anyway, let's all try to remember we're on the same side here, yes? The Ball looks to be back on track ticket sales-wise, and everything is in place for a great evening. Enjoy it!

All the best... Mark

[Simon]

[s]Mark wrote on 05:34, 20th Apr 2004:
Now then, people... no-one should be upset with anyone.

Tell that to the people coming from far away who were suddenly not knowing whether to get on a train or plane or not and didn't know whether they would lose deposits for rooms/transport etc, If the ball didn't happen. Hannah had to post on the rocksoc_reunion list to calm folks down again after I passed on Dave's email.

The message about the possible cancellation of the ball was intended to serve as a warning, not a threat

Scare tactics are never the best marketing strategy. For those in town it's one thing to see a friend and find ticket sales weren't that bad after all. For us old bastards, it's downringht inconvenient. Were you going to phone everyone in London/Manchester/Edinburgh on Friday night to tell them that they should get on the train on Saturday morning after all cos the ball was in fact on?

and it seems to have worked, as loads of people have now started buying tickets. Apologies to anyone who took it differently.

It's St Andrews! People always leave things to the last minute. I suspect actual total sales would be largely unaffected. People will have made their mind up to go or not before this. They just left the ticket buying until late on.

You could have simply asked for a show of hands at the end of the last Rocksoc for those intending to buy tickets this week and made projections from there, rather than causing panic and a lot of annoyance amongst those travelling from afar.

No-one's mailed the old bastards list yet to say they're cancelling and demanding a refund, but the idea's been mentioned and I wouldn't be overly surprised if someone did.

Mabye sales are up, but is that simply because you're blatantly on show outside the union every day? That email, threat, warning, whatever, served no purpose to those out of town, except to piss a lot of people off that had to be placated by one of the committee that ddn't even know about the decision to send the oroginal mail!

Not the smartest publicity stunt ever, boys and girls.

[Guest]

Apparently this whole debacle was simply a ploy to get people to buy more tickets.
Well, if the committee had done their job properly in the first place they wouldn't have had to resort to such idiotic measures to procure some ticket sales.
This is the nice, edited version, by the way...

[Kytheraen]

Why are you hiding behind the anonymity of the internet? If you have something to say, at least own up to it.

Real mature.

[Dangermouse]

Right. As a committee member who wasn't consulted before that stupid email went out, I have slapped the offenders upside the head for their stupidity. They know it was stupid, you know it was stupid, and now we all know that ticket sales are going fine.

There shall be a ball.

Now stop bitching.

Emma

[little missy]

Well said that girl.

Its gonna rock like a bitch with canoes on her feet!

I can't wait, its gonna be fab, get your ticket soon - I know dinner tickets are nearly all sold out!

Whoever that unregistered user is, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. I can enforce this since I can delete your message (or maybe edit it to suit myself...)

[brizbraz]

I now know that the Ball is going ahead. Hurrah! All is well in RockSoc land, hurrah!
I can, however, fully understand why people would be pissed off at this carry on.
I was kinda narked at the whole thing, being an old bastard and being a grumpy old man, just like simon (although with a much less impressive beard).
It was a pretty badly thought out plan to bring in more ticket sales, especially seeing as the whole of the committee were not informed.
I hope the ball goes well, and I hope my frock looks really nice. If it's half as good as the lst one it'll be a stonker.

[Madny]

So far I've seen mention that only some of the committee were involved in this decision. And I've seen two females mention that they specifically weren't asked their opinions...

Without actually commenting on the viability or sense of the decision I do wonder... Was it only male committee members who came up with the idea of the ball cancellation threat?

[underworlddreams]

Bluergh!

All of this has left a very sour taste in my mouth. I hate bitching, I hate it when people feel let down, and I hate it when motivations and events are given clumsy post-mortems. As far as I was concerned at the time, we were letting the society know about the possibility of failure before it had the chance to happen. If it publicised the ticket sales, so be it - but personally, I wanted to make sure that people weren't told the night before that the event was cancelled without any prior warning.

The Image Maker (student film recently screened) was meant to be shown last term, but thanks to last minute technical difficulties had to be postponed until this term. It wasn't a pleasant job for people to tell all of those who'd hired kilts/suits and done themselves up (it was black tie for the circle tickets) that it was cancelled. It also wasn't a pleasant job telling all those proud parents/families of the cast and crew that they'd driven and flown all the way to the back of beyond for no reason. I didn't have to do this - however, my friends did, and they didn't like it at all. That couldn't have been forewarned. I felt that this could be.

Not many Balls have as many people coming from outside the town to attend as this. Obviously we've no real experience with this kind of large-scale logistics, or with organising a Ball at all. In words that you'll never hear from the government, or the university, or the Union for that matter - "A mistake was made. We're sorry."

The impromptu meeting on Sunday was just that. There was no intention of discussing the Ball in any serious manner, but, when it came up it became apparent that we weren't doing as well with ticket sales as we had hoped. Yes, it's St Andrews, and you can say that everyone leaves things to the last minute, but at the time we were panicked and wondering what the hell we'd do if the Ball had to be cancelled. And it would have to be if tickets had continued to be sold at the same rate - around 30 dinner tickets (so we thought - and it couldn't have been many more) in around a month. I don't know about the rest of the committee, but I was extremely worried about letting people down. So sue me.



Now, shall we forget all this shit and just get absolutely, well and truly, utterly and thoroughly pissed on Saturday? I for one will be so bladdered, I'm booking my stomach pumping already. I hear we can get a discount if we book 10 or more.

The Golf Hotel won't know what's hit them...

[hr]They say that if you play a Windows Install CD backwards, you hear satanic messages. That's nothing - play it forwards, and it installs Windows...

[Guest]

The last time I put a post on this message board which went against the view of the committee it caused a huge furore. It ended up with myself being threatened with a good kicking.
At that time I was expressing my own opinion, as I am now. It is not important who I am, as I appear to share the views of quite a number of other members of the society (as I did on the previous occasion) and feel that I have made a number of valid (if opinionated) points. If the previous situation had not occurred then I would not have posted anonymously.
Imature, maybe, beaten to a pulp by irate committee members, probably not...