Anyone notice a huge jump in activity post swap?

[cwolfus]

Those who got there early had plenty of time to browse, but the browsing became an impediment during the last 30ish minutes, or so. We just couldn't get through people fast enough to get stuff placed.

However, I agree that once it settled down it would have been better to allow a browse. It just didn't work out that way. Next time... ;-)

-Charles

 

[Skorpinok]

I think at the time - it wasn't feasible to allow people to browse the frag tables. Especially most of them showed up with-in 30 minutes before the actual frag swap. What's worse, we had people still showing up after the 3rd group was already frag swap area.

 

[Thales]

Ah - Last year we stopped registration at 1230 to allow everyone to calm down and give time for browsing. We didn't do that this year.

 

[Vincerama2]

Some "Tricks" that help you (as a frag grabber, er, I mean "swapper")

- Bring LOTS of frags, this will dilute the number of people going for frags that you want. (Throwing the Blue Lep in was brilliant, even though it was a club contribution)

- Bring frags of the type you want. If you want SPS, then bring SPS frags so that you can distract other SPS grabbers from the pieces you might want

- Bring frags, not entire corals. I don't mean "be stingy (sp? stin-gee)" but if you brought 3 candy cane heads, it can either be one head each for 3 people, or three heads for one person. This is a FRAG swap, people expect frags.

- Bring more than just kenya tree, colt, xenia. This is in the same "distract your rivals" technique, these corals won't distract people going after the same things you want.

- If someone grabs the frag you want, just remember who grabbed it and ask them to put in the DBTC pool. Or find out who brought the original frag and ask them for it. It IS a frag SWAP after all, you can swap outside the context of the "grab".

- Conspire with a buddy! Zepplock and I planned to get different things so that we could swap frags after they grew out a few months! Also, we did "recon" since I was in an earlier group than his.


Some suggests for the next swap

- Maybe when someone grabs a coral, the can optionally "register" it. Like when they leave the grabbing area, maybe sign their name and the frag they took, then post the list so that other's who may be interested can request frags from them in the future. Maybe do the same for contributors, so that advice on coral care can be given/requested. yeah, I know...more paperwork!

- have a "Beginners/Newbie" table and put the easy to care for corals there so that Newbs don't go grabbing stuff that they might not know how to care for. Stack it with zoos, easy lps, hardy softies, etc. I know, it's futile cuz they'll run for the sticks anyway, but some might appreciate it.

- Encourage/promote using the Bar frag labels, might speed things up a bit. Encourage (colour) pics of the mother colony.

- Put the freebie table up front. I think people were afraid to grab te freebies for fear that it would "count" as a grab.

- Allow/encourage people to bring BACK a frag, if the grabbed one, then sat down only to see that their friend took the same one OR they found that it was unsuitable for their tank OR the got a closer look and didn't really want it. (like a returns counter at Frys!) Maybe after a round of all groups (A->L) have picked, just say...any one who regrets their pick, bring it back and get a new one, before starting back down the alphabet?



Anyway, just my 20 cents worth! I'm not complaining, I always enjoy the swaps, I'm just thinking out loud. Cuz I like to type lots.


V

 

[Lordhelmet]

mike i hope you don't think i intended that comment at you. i was typing it and when i was done your post was there. i do agree we should get a look. but it needs to be short. it was fun.

 

[Twisted]

I agree with most of that. Although your suggestions on how to get a better chance at getting the good frags, reads more as greed the it does "spirit of the swap" since the spirit of the swap is to bring what you can.
I do understand your point of view, and I do understand that it isn't greed, but actually promote bringing in more stuff, and beinfiets everyone, not just you.
I wanted to point that out so that no one else read it as being greedy, or maybe I am just Twisted.

Setting up a register to let everyone know, who got what, would probablly add too much time to the whole event. Perhaps if you had a list of "Rares", or "LE's" and people could put thier reef central handle next to that item at the end of the event if they wanted to.

The freebie table was a good point, I heard Thale mention that was the freebie table, but I didn't grasp the meaning behind that. Perhaps they should have just put that stuff on the tables outside the "exit" door for the frag area.

The labels could have been better. Perhaps future swaps can have label requirments like Common name, Coloration description, lighting on your tank, flow in your tank, name of farmer, etc...
Which reminds me, sorry, that was my first attempt at labels so the ones with the yellowish octopus on it our the ones I shared with my R.A.R.E. group from Redding. So they were missing some details.

The frag return I think would be a major inconvience and easily abused.
Perhaps we could just make a "after event exchange party" where everyone meets out in the parking lot to see if someone else grabbed something they wanted.


A member of our club had another great idea to add to that list. I noticed a lot of people in the sitting area, and in the parking lot were selling frags, equipment, etc...
Perhaps we could add a "swap meet" in the parking lot of the event, like they do at car shows, for selling our ald equipment, or our extra frags.
I know I went down there with only about $200 bucks, and was really impressed when I came back with $50 still in my pocket...Of course, another 10 grand prize tickets and maybe I would have took home that prop tank instead of Gresham!

 

[sfsuphysics]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9240292#post9240292 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Vincerama2

- Bring LOTS of frags, this will dilute the number of people going for frags that you want. (Throwing the Blue Lep in was brilliant, even though it was a club contribution)

I brought 55 containers of frags, left with 4, I'm getting to be more of a picky reefer though, I don't just want to toss anything in my tank

- Bring frags of the type you want. If you want SPS, then bring SPS frags so that you can distract other SPS grabbers from the pieces you might want

My 12 micropthalma frags and 1 mini colony didn't seem to work this well, although the mini colony was gone early, the frags were around near the end. Although my blue millepora frags seemed to throw the scent off

- Conspire with a buddy! Zepplock and I planned to get different things so that we could swap frags after they grew out a few months! Also, we did "recon" since I was in an earlier group than his.

I do this anyways, if someone wants something I have no biggy, and they usually are the same.

- Maybe when someone grabs a coral, the can optionally "register" it. Like when they leave the grabbing area, maybe sign their name and the frag they took, then post the list so that other's who may be interested can request frags from them in the future. Maybe do the same for contributors, so that advice on coral care can be given/requested. yeah, I know...more paperwork!

You have offically volunteered for the task, congratulations on your appointment, we'll work out logistics later

Something similar was tossed about last time, started simply as getting a census of what was brought, being really simple # of softies, sps, etc, think it got shelved for being too much hassle for the registration people.

- have a "Beginners/Newbie" table and put the easy to care for corals there so that Newbs don't go grabbing stuff that they might not know how to care for. Stack it with zoos, easy lps, hardy softies, etc. I know, it's futile cuz they'll run for the sticks anyway, but some might appreciate it.

But this would be counter productive to your plan to dilute with decent stuff We did have a newbie table, it was called the softies area

- Encourage/promote using the Bar frag labels, might speed things up a bit. Encourage (colour) pics of the mother colony.

I tried this last swap with some frags. I went to my Mom's place to use her inkjet (since I only have a laser), and while it was sorta, ok the colors didn't look quite as good as on the monitor, and worst of all, once it got wet... Oy vey! Although color laser printers are really cheap now.....

 

[sfsuphysics]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9240699#post9240699 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Twisted

A member of our club had another great idea to add to that list. I noticed a lot of people in the sitting area, and in the parking lot were selling frags, equipment, etc...
Perhaps we could add a "swap meet" in the parking lot of the event, like they do at car shows, for selling our ald equipment, or our extra frags.

There would most likely be legal issues with this, since ASAP (Are they AQSAP now?) is a business. Most of the selling should have been prearranged, and probably was, although I'm sure some people didn't. But whatever, this isn't a selling type swap event, the BA-CFM is what you want for selling your stuff Although some areas do have fleamarket type sales, don't know if that's even a consideration with the club.