[kent]

I originally posted this in the "winter fest" thread, but the point of the post was not to detract from a nice event in Islamorada, but rather to try to deter what we saw last season with "conflicting" events. Read on:

RE: Winter Fest Event in Islamorada

Dear Seven,

The event sounds like fun. It sure would have been nice to avoid the same weekend that we have an event at Crandon. As you know, this is only about 1.5 hrs. away.

I'm looking forward to coming down to support your events like I've always done in the past. I do however hope that you will be scheduling them this year with the best intentions of providing a fun atmosphere that encourages increased participation rather than simply dumping events on top of already of scheduled events run by your competitors. I seem to remember that last year you ran into several scheduling "conflicts" even on the relatively small island of Islamorada. I can't imagine that the kite community is so large there that you were unaware of other proposed events.

All of us need to take special care to add to our kite community and not take from it. At best running an event is a break even for an organizer. To allow organizers to get the most out of their efforts, avoiding scheduling conflicts is a must. The kite community is far better served by having more events to attend rather than conflicted events that make participants have to choose. This only results in less benefit for the organizers / sponsors and smaller events in general. The net result is that sponsors won't participate again and participants are turned off by an event with limited participation.


At any rate, our event at Crandon is only Saturday anyway and the wind doesn't look great yet. We will run the SUP's no matter what, but if it's good in Islamorada on Sunday we might head that way.

For those want to meet Andre Phillip, Damien Leroy, John Modica, and World Champion Snow Kiter Kevin Steen, they will be at Crandon Beach Park this Saturday, November 15th. The event is free, but regular Crandon fees apply.