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The 2010 Road Rally was a roaring success. Everyone kept telling me that it's a good but I never thought it was THAT good. Michael Laskow and his team deserve
all the credit for putting together an outstanding conference that no one else in the
industry can pull off. It's amazing that in a hotel full of so many musicians, all the egos were checked at the door. At TAXI everyone is treated equally-it shows!
I would like to make a few suggestions and hopefully get a healthy debate going for some possible improvements:
1) registration-in this day and age I'm sure we can device a better method of signing up for the mentors. After all, the mentor lunch tickets are handled online on first come first served basis. Couldn't the mentor registration be handled in a similar fashion? there has got to be a better way!! What if someone misses their connection flight?
2) mentor sessions- ten minutes is not enough! you just get warmed up and then you're out
the door. Make them at least 15 minutes, everyone will love you for it and you can still have
slots for everyone.
3) mentor lunches: the room is too small and thus too noisy.Either the Westin should do some sound treatment or host the lunches somewhere else. Or how about hosting the lunches in a different way: One for composers and one for songwriters. That way you cut the numbers in the room and everyone sitting at the table gets better targeted advice.
4) listening panels and pitching- throwing your CD in a box is a lottery!!! how about signing up for them on a first come first served basis. If someone is persistent enough to sign up for the open mic nights I'm sure they can do the same to pitch their music or get some pro feedback for it. By signing up (much like the mentors) you're guaranteed a listen!
4) panels- allow more than 15 minutes between sessions. That way if a session runs into overtime, the attendees still have time to hang out with the panelists without sessions overstepping each other.

Like I said before, this is not criticism. All these ideas are merely presented to get the ball rolling for a healthy discussion. How about it folks? How about it Michael?

warmest regards to all

Adonis

I kind of agree with you guitaroboe. I think that there can be a better way to do the panels as well I dont think that some of the genre get a fair shot of being played. There should be some type of system like each genre gets a play one after the other like if I play country then jazz should follow sothing like that.

Hey Adonis!

First of all, it was great to meet you. You are very talented and such a nice person.

I know you are interested in bettering the experience and TAXI is all ears, but they prefer you email them your suggestions and not post them up on the boards. Beleive me, we have been down this road before and debated these things to no end.

In the end people's experiences vary and we just end up getting nowhere. One person's long registration line is another person's opportunity to make new friends.

Go ahead and send all of your thoughts to TAXI in an email and it will be listened to.

Best,

Cisco

Hi Adonis,

GREAT to meet you and so many other Forum folks! Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated.

As for suggestions, please email them. When they are posted on the forum, I feel obligated to answer each one, and they tend to get repeated all over the place. If I don't answer them, it looks like I/we are ignoring them, which is not the case. I've already got a Rally 2011 folder with an ideas doc in it

To answer a couple of yours:

Impossible to do mentor sign ups on line, as the mentors tend to drop out, change times and get added right up until the VERY last minute. If we let people register online before the Rally, then we'll spend dozens of hours contacting the members who have already signed up for mentors who drop out or change their availability last minute. If we had attendees sign up online AT the hotel, we'd get complaints that they couldn't afford internet access, didn't bring a computer, etc. ALSO, a HUGE factor is that a TON of people don't know who to pick and wait until they talk to our staff at the Mentor Reg. board to make a final decision, even though they've had at least a week to view the bios before the Rally.

The 10 minute sessions were a mistake on our part. they always been 15, but a staffer made a mistake that nobody caught until we had opened the registration line and had already booked the mentors. We apologize and it will be back to 15 minutes next year.

Mentor lunches being noisy. There IS no other room that can hold that many people other than the main ballroom and there is no way to break down 1,100 seats and set up tables, chairs, place settings, etc., then go back to seats again in a 15 minutes... AND do that TWICE in a weekend. Rally logistics are MUCH harder than they appear to the naked eye. As for the hotel treating the ballroom... my guess is that it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to re-do the walls in a room that size, and they'd only do it during a major remodel of the entire property. We HAVE suggested that. In years past, we brought our own acoustic foam for the main ballroom and spent a half day stapling it up (it was ugly as well), and a few hours taking it down after the Rally. Ughhh!

As for cutting the numbers of people in the luncheons. By us NOT making any money on the meals, it allows the hotel to gross and net enough on food and beverage that our members get their sleeping rooms at a great rate and allows us to not charge for the Rally. If we cut the number of people/meals in half, all other costs go up. That's the way the hotel/convention business works.

As for the pitch panel drop boxes being a lottery, you are right. If everybody DIDN'T stand a chance, then the ballroom and panels would be empty except for the people who knew they were going to be heard. Then nobody else would get to learn from the comments made by the panel. Notice that out of 2,500 attendees, only a percentage of them are in the open mics at night? That's because many people hang elsewhere because THEY are not going to play.

Frankly Adonis, I don't want a "healthy discussion" about what we can improve. I want emails! When it goes public, everybody tries to be helpful (which I DO appreciate), but then it causes me to have to answer every suggestion and tell you all that we have either tried it already in the years before you attended (and it didn't work), or explain the behind the scenes logistics, union laws, fire marshal issues, etc. that you are unaware of and couldn't possibly be expected to know.

Dear God, please everybody... I know your suggestions are VERY well meaning, but please send them to ANY TAXI email addy, and they will ALL get heard in our post Rally meeting and placed in the Rally 2011 file. But it is exhausting for me to police the boards and keep answering every one of these, question by question.

I still have more than a week's work post Rally before I get a day off. I have to write more than 100 personal thank you notes, do the post Rally document clean up (48,000 words from me alone!), deal with hotel bills, sponsor issues, staff issues, unhappy member issues, and on and on and on.

How about starting a "This is what I loved at Road Rally 2010" thread and ask everybody to chime in on that?

I PROMISE you all email suggestions will be read and considered. I just don't have the time to keep explaining over and over why some things are the way they are. This response took me more than 15 minutes to type because I type slowly. Please have mercy!!!

thanks,
Michael

Hopefully, this doesn't get me in any trouble but I actually missed my 1on1 session because I was reading the time meeting as after the mentor lunch-if that makes sense-vs understanding that the 10min sessions were all held on Friday. Anyway, I miss the session and low & behold the person I wanted to see is heading the last session I'm sitting in on Sunday morning. Afterwards, I go talk to him and he notices his name on my badge and I mention that I missed my session with him & he offers to have the session right there as soon as he gets his geared packed up! Honest truth. I thanked him, shook his hand and even offered to help him clean up. My point is this, yes people are eager and excited to meet their "ideal" mentor and have that life changing conversation but the best advice I can offer is to attend 1 of their workshops. What I discovered is many had book signings and other product tables going on afterwards that they encouraged people to come attend and ask more detailed questions during that time. I'm not saying bombard them with questions but you'd be surprised by how many times I was able to have a 20-30 minute conversation with the professional of my choice just because I'd asked, or answered, a certain question in their workshop. Hope this helps in the future.