Hi thebetterhalf,
Some of your points are fair but just for the record I address each one as best I can:
The notice in the Parish Newsletter were designed to attract more volunteers to act as stewards and to see if anyone had ideas that we could implement into the program of events.
I'm sorry to hear that we didn't get back to you about volunteering. We actually had only a handful of replies and even then people that did offer their help didn't turn up to meetings.
Item one for 2013 will be improving how we recruit volunteers and communicate with them. I'm not sure where we'd put a sign but we have text messages, twitter and facebook pumping out information.
The issue of the booking office. The owner of the empty unit gave us permission to use it as a booking office in the weeks before the festival (it will also be the photography gallery). However he had lost the front door key... so when the volunteers turned up the quick fix was to move across the road to Ron's who offered space.
We're not using Riverhouse because we found last year 1) no one could find Riverhouse 2) when we moved the booking office into the then empty unit on Main Street we got a lot of passing trade. From your post you say you were asking about booking activities in Riverhouse a full month before the Festival?
I have to agree multiple numbers for booking different activities was not the best option. This was done because kayaking attracts a huge volume of inquiries and we thought having a dedicated line for this would help. Likewise on the Luka Bloom concert the promoter wanted a dedicated number.
I made sure to call back every call I missed on the days I was on booking, but we all experienced one major problem: When people rattle off a contact number its really hard to copy it down and a fair proportion had number withheld so we couldn't automatically call them back. This sounds like an excuse but these are the facts.
I'm not aware of any mess with the sign-up except that our instructor of choice pulled out with three weeks to go and we had to find a replacement and when the initial places filled up we went back and negotiated extra places. We provide an 80euro course for 35euro through the kind sponsorship of Waterways Ireland.
On posters, programs and advertising: We were in fact only one week later than last year with the program and signage.
Posters were beyond our limited budget this year, likewise in previous years we had cheap advertising features in local papers which were subsidized by ads from local businesses.
I can honestly say that the worst thing about putting together this years festival is realizing just how hard businesses and individuals are finding it to survive.
We definitely don't want people to chase us. Where we make a mistake we try and change and react to what people are looking for. For example when we realized it was difficult for people to get to the booking office between 2-4pm in the first week we changed the time to 6-8pm to try and better serve our customers.
Its not a lack of organization it 7 people and 4 or 5 volunteers with jobs and lives trying to give a full service to 5000+ people who will avail of the program of free and subsidized events and workshops.
I hope you and your daughters have lots of fun.
p.s. would you drop me a line to monhistsoc@eircom.net or message the Facebook page
www.facebook.com/veniceofireland and I'll make sure that you get to volunteer for 2013 or perhaps if you're available to put up some tents and steward events for about 5 hours on Saturday 21st?