At Bliss a full page add stated...
Some women were booking a chalet for 3 girls and 3 boys and other variations and then the boys dont turn up
Suggesting these were not real bookings ie Ghost bookings. That women to get onto these events were deliberatly cheating the gender balance system
This means we are getting more women then men at these events
It means less men so more space
It means more women for men to pick from, and the return of the old Francos women lines at the side
Good news
MODERATOR AT YOUR SERVICE
"If you're going to do something tonight, that you know you'll be sorry for in the morning, plan a lie in." Lorraine
I think we should have another discussion about gender balance.
Maybe there are 2 parts to it:
1. The prep/planning to 'engineer' more gender balance (only seems to get trickier.....Warmwell were not taking any bookings for a group of ladies - this is 1 year in advance.......).
I have no solutions to this......
2. How to manage gender balance on 'the night' (or weekender).
With regard to the second point, one interesting feature of a local ballroom dance, was described to me (I may have this wrong - but the principle is interesting): part of the dance floor is called the 'bus stop' where women queue for a dance. As a dance finishes then a guy goes over and has the next woman in the queue........... maybe not exactly like that - but you get the idea.
We had fun chatting about how you could deploy that approach in Ceroc/MJ......
I have every sympathy for Ceroc HQ here; they make strenuous and costly efforts to try to ensure gender balancing, when they could clearly make more money from simply flogging tickets to anyone.
Unfortunately, if people are determined to bust the system, there's only so much anyone can do, without being draconian about it.
Oh, and personally I also prefer even numbers, rather than lots of women over; it makes for a better night for me, and I know that when I'm asked to dance, that's because my partner actually wants to dance with me
How would you check? Do some guys check in as Mike Smith with one party - then, nip out, shave, put a wig on, then check in as Gavin Peacock?
Maybe DNA or fingerprinting is the only way forward. Or Ceroc Pressgangs roaming the local hostelries of Camber and Southport to entice young men.....
As an organiser I've gender balanced a few events that I expected to sell out in advance. This is because women seem to book much earlier than men - and they book even earlier if it's gender balanced. I then have to produce lady's waiting lists in case we don't get enough men booking. And then I have to contact the women on the list when we get enough men - by then some of them have made other plans.
However, men seem to book in a flurry during the week before the event. In the end I find I've not turned anyone away and wonder why I went to all that trouble
That all sounds a little demeaning for the ladies, queueing for a man - no thanks - but I have played bustop as an icebreaker game and that is quite good fun but both men and women queue dance down the middle and then rejoin the queues
It is difficult as even if one got banned, they could book in another name next year. I think the booking form should have all the names of people booking in mixed chalets because it is harder to supply names in advance and yes I know they could make names up.
True enough.
I think where gender balancing is concerned, either you accept that some people are always going to mess with the system, or you become far more militant - say, insisting that all groups must check in together at the same time.
We've had this discussion many a time.
I think the one suggestion that's not been tried is the price-adjustment incentive - that is, making the cost more for women than for men. From what I recall, way back when, Stewart38 suggested this...
Ultimately, the solution is to get more men dancing. And yes, I realise this is SOTBO territory, but managing the symptoms is not managing the problem.
Well, I suspect it'd be nearly imposible, unless they held the person responsible, who's credit card was used for the booking.
They could tell, by which envelope had unclaimed male wristbands
Maybe a deposit could be held against that credit card?
I dunno, women are very very clever, its hard to out-wit us
MODERATOR AT YOUR SERVICE
"If you're going to do something tonight, that you know you'll be sorry for in the morning, plan a lie in." Lorraine
I'm sure many options have been thought of - and I'm sure this one will prove to have as many holes as all the others but...
Would it work if - on booking - everyone had to give the name and ceroc number of the whole group they were booking for. (I'm assuming you have to be a member of Ceroc to attend one of their events?)
If someone then realised they couldn't make the event they could sell (or give away if they were feeling flush!) their place to someone else, then that person's name and number would replace the original.
The organisers would then know exactly who was supposed to attend the event and could then work on a 3-strikes and you're out basis. Miss 3 events banned from x events.
Fire away chaps...
There's another unbalancing effect too.
I used to go up to SP with a group of ladies who took their husbands along to balance the party. The ladies danced and the men played golf at the many clubs around Ainsdale.
You can take a man to Camber, but you can't make him dance.
I don't think you have to be a Ceroc member to attend their events. Even if you did, it doesn't stop people having multiple membership cards. I've got at least 3!
What you're suggesting can still be defeated by impersonation - the same man arriving several times with different Ceroc cards - either ones he owns, or ones borrowed from other people. There are thousands of Ceroc cards in existence that are only used for a few trips before their owners give up.
If you really want to be Draconian, you need people to give their full names at booking and insist that they bring passports/driving licences to check-in.
So long as events continue to be sell-outs, an alternative might be to allocate each Ceroc venue a quota of tickets. They can then reward their regular dancers by offering the option to buy tickets. Regular dancers are more likely to turn-up in freezing conditions at Camber. It might also mean that unpopular venues suddenly get new customers .
A further alternative is to remove the explicit gender balance, but provide a live male/female ratio on the booking website. If ladies want to keep booking once the balance gets to 40/60, then it's their problem, not Ceroc's. This approach discourages early booking, so it would need to be combined with early/late/dead bird pricing, or auctioning the tickets on ebay.
Last edited by FirstMove; 30th-November-2010 at 03:28 PM.
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