May 22, 2015
Dear Everyone:
Caution: Dates in Calendar
are closer than they appear to be.
Last night was ARMA night, or so I thought.
The fiscal year is July through June, for reasons I’ve never known and
don’t really care about.
Suffice to say that last summer we set the dates for “ARMA Night” for
the fourth Thursday in each month, except for November and December.
November, of course, has
Thanksgiving Day, which also tends to fall on
the fourth Thursday of the month.
So we move “ARMA Night” to another date.
As for December, so many people are busy with Holiday shopping,
school pageants, vacation time, and so on, that we just skip over that
month entirely.
We also skip the summer months of July and August, just because too many
people are off for vacation and such.
So, the fourth Thursday of each month, with notable exceptions.
But at least people have the ability to plan ahead.
In fact, I made up a “Year-At-A-Glance” calendar, showing all the
ARMA dates as well as national holidays.
A copy of it is sitting in front of my computer screen right now.
It’s very handy.
And therein lies the problem.
For some unfathomable reason, when I made up this calendar last
year, I placed the May “ARMA Night” on the 21st when it
should have been the 28th.
I have no clue how or why this happened.
In the meantime… “Clancy”, our former
Webmaster, handed me the “keys” to
our Chapter Website, as well as arrangements for something called
“Eventbrite” to manage registration and credit card payments for our
monthly meetings. If
“Clancy” was still handling the announcements, registration, etc., he
might have noticed the difference in the dates for May.
Or not.
In any case, the mistake was made and sat quietly, chuckling to itself,
while I set up the announcement and the registration in Eventbrite, all
for the wrong date.
And no one noticed until last week, when I looked at one calendar that
showed “ARMA Night” on the 21st and another the 28th.
Oops.
First question: Which date
was the correct one?
Second question: If the 28th
was the correct date, but everything said the 21st, could we
simply change the actual date to the 21st?
This set off a round of email messages back and forth between myself,
the Program Director, who made arrangements with no less than four
people to give this month’s presentation, and the Hospitality Director,
who made arrangements with the restaurant where we hold most of our
meetings. One reason for
setting up the dates so far in advance is to make booking the “meeting
room” at the restaurant easier.
Ultimately, it was the restaurant that made the decision.
Simply put, they had us down for the 28th and someone
else had booked the room for the 21st.
But what about those four presenters?
They were expecting to do it on the 21st.
Could they change the date?
Yes. Big sigh of relief,
followed by my revising the Website, Eventbrite and sending out a notice
to all Members and “Friends of Mt Diablo Chapter” about the change of
date.
Now, about Eventbrite. This
is a web-based service that allows a group, like ours, to create an
Event, with the date and time, location of the venue, and the price of
tickets. It also allows
people to pay with a credit card, thus saving them the effort of showing
up with cash or a check.
Every time someone buys a ticket and pays by credit card, the money goes
into the Chapter checking account, with a little skimmed off the top for
Eventbrite. That’s how they
make their money.
If an Event is cancelled, the system arranges to refund the ticket
prices back to the purchaser.
Or so it should.
Luckily for us, only five people had signed up for the 21st
at this point. Three of them
were Board members, and NONE of them had used a credit card.
This made cancelling the original Event, on the 21st,
much, much easier. I sent
out emails, notifying the five, including myself, about the “change of
date”, and that they would soon get a message from Eventbrite that the
Event had been cancelled.
After that, it was a fairly simple matter to cancel the original orders,
and then cancel the Event.
And create a new Event for the 28th.
And provide a link to the new Event on the chapter Website.
And send out a “New-and-Improved!” email to everyone about the
date change and so on.
As of today, a total of nine people are signed up for next week’s
meeting. Four of them are
the four Speakers originally scheduled.
Two more also work for the company that the Speakers work for.
And of the three remaining, one of them is me.
It could turn out to be a very small meeting.
We shall see.
Love, as always,
Pete
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