Page 184 - ShowSight - January 2020

Breed Education Fourth in a Series
BY CELESTE M. GONZALEZ
IT STARTS WITH BYOU
reed educa- tion does start with you: You the seminar
presenter, You the learn- er, and You the seminar coordinator. Breed edu- cation serves prospective adjudicators, be they judges or breeders. What you put into the learning or teaching experience, is what you, and others, get out of it. In the case of the seminar coordina- tor, what you put into it affects the learner(s) and
the teacher(s).
In the last issue, we looked at some of what it took to prepare
for a breed(s) seminar(s) from the perspective of the seminar coor- dinator. In this article, 4th in the series, we will cover the rest of the planning and preparation aspects by the seminar(s) coordinator, including the preparatory and implementation work that goes on during the seminars.
Communications is probably the most time-consuming aspect of seminar coordination. Marketing of seminars was addressed in the previous article and is just one of the communication transac- tions that will occur before, during, and after the seminars.
Communications prior to, during, and after the seminars can be roughly broken down into the following categories, of which the first three were discussed in previous articles in the series.
• Marketing
• Facility administration (may be included with the next item)
• Concurrent event management administration, e.g. dog club
event chairs
• Parent club judges education coordinators (JEC)
• Seminar presenters (may be the same as JEC)
• Handlers of hands-on example dogs
• Prospective seminar attendees
• Individuals that are assisting with seminar coordination or
assisting the presenter
• Any others that I’ve inadvertently left out!
Finding the current JEC for a breed parent club is usually straightforward. However, if you are coordinating seminars for multiple breeds, be prepared to go on a hunt in some cases. JECs can be found on the AKC web site under Judges Education Coor- dinators (JEC), https://www.akc.org/sports/conformation/judging- information/ . The AKC tries to keep this up to date, but it is only as up to date as parent clubs inform the AKC of changes to the JEC listings. It does help to cross-check with the parent club’s web site to ensure that the JEC has not changed since the last time the AKC updated their JEC list. Even with that, there will still be changes.
Keeping a list of all the JECs for your target breeds seminars is clear cut via a spreadsheet or other simple database or document of your choosing. Consider not just having the name, email and phone number of the parent club’s JEC, but also the club’s president. I found it helpful to have a spreadsheet with multiple tabs, one for the JECs with contact information and full name of parent club, one for seminar presenters with contact information, and another
one that is a grid of dates and time slots to be filled as commitments are made for presentations. Don’t forget to factor in lunch breaks and any other breaks you may want to include when setting up your day/time slot grid.
All the JECs for breeds at your seminars should be contacted well in advance of your planned seminars with the information basics of the seminar block to be offered: range of dates, location, daily semi- nar hours, audio-visual materials your educational group provides and your expectations of what the parent club needs to provide, e.g. educational materials, presentation in PowerPoint and PDF on a USB stick, dogs for hands-on examples. “Well in advance” means, to me at least, a minimum of six months ahead. Ask for their breed to participate and who would be doing the seminar presentation and hands-on. Sometimes the seminar presenter is someone other than the JEC. The JEC may ask you to communicate with that person, or the JEC will find a seminar presenter for you. Be sure to inform the JEC that the sooner they commit to a breed presenta- tion, the greater likelihood they’ll have of obtaining a date and time slot of the presenter’s choosing. Most presenters will want to know about hotels and airport in proximity, transportation, etc., so it is helpful to have that information already available on your initial request for seminar presenters. A simple color-coding system on the seminars spreadsheet allows easy identification of which clubs have been contacted to present, which have committed to present, which have declined, and which are wavering or just need more time.
My experience is that the whole process of communicating with JECs/presenters and getting the seminar scheduling almost locked down, takes about 4-8 weeks. That leaves approximately 12-14 weeks to market to prospective attendees, receive and acknowledge participant registrations. If your group needs more time for market- ing, start the process sooner, but at least get an announcement of the scope of the seminars in the major avenues of announcement (AKC Judging Resource Center, Facebook judges groups, Judges email list, parent club web site, dog magazines, etc.)
How your group is going to receive registrations and payments can be flexible depending on your needs. If your group has a dedi- cated web site, you may want to have the registration form and pay- ment go entirely through the web site. If you don’t, you may want to ask prospective learners to request a registration form and send it to each requestor via email. Registration forms can be designed in most word-processing programs and Adobe Acrobat, to include fill- in-the-blank fields. The requestor can go the old-fashioned route of printing the completed registration form and sending it in with a check via snail mail to the coordinator. Registrants find comfort in knowing when their paper checks were deposited, so a quick email to them notifying of check deposited is a nice gesture. For groups that hold seminars in a cadence of one-a-month or similar, you may wish to take registration fees at the door. However, with that meth- od, the presenter will not have a good idea of how many educational packets to have available for learners.
When designing your seminar registration form, besides the obvious of learner identification, it’s a good idea to get informa- tion for an emergency contact name and contact phone number for each registrant. Hopefully, it will never be needed, but if it is, you’ve got it without having to go through the registrant’s personal effects. A grid of the days, time slots, and breed presentation slated for each should be on the registration form. Having a check box next to each breed, or instructions for circling the breed(s) of inter- est to the attendee, allows the seminar coordinator to keep track
176 • ShowSight Magazine, January 2020