This year’s Event Organizer and TD Training Seminar was held over two days in the new Warming Hut at the Oak Hill Outdoor Center in Hanover, NH, with participants traveling from as far away as Rochester, NY. We kicked off the seminar with two group exercises – Jury Procedures practice and Events Contingencies, where groups of three or four discussed the options and decision making and shared their conclusions with the larger group. There were some great ideas around the crazy winter weather we encounter in the East!
This year many of the participants opted in to a delicious preordered lunch from The Works Bakery Cafe. After an excellent meal and great conversations, Mike Hussey, the Director of the Oak Hill Outdoor Center led a discussion on snow making, sharing insights from his more than 30 years of experience in the industry. The groups then ventured around the venue working on warmup loop concepts. After stretching ours legs and minds, the group reconvened at the Warming Hut to share their findings. We followed this up with a presentation by Chris Naimie on the changes to the scoring process for this year’s Popular Series..
We kicked off Sunday morning with video review of rule infractions from last season, led by Allan Serrano. The crowd tried to see if we came to the same conclusions as the race juries did. By and large we did, but in a couple cases we disagreed! Next we did a series of demonstration stations on various aspects of race day hosting, including: bib handout, snow maintenance on a sharp downhill turn, sprint and mass start zone setup, relay exchanges and ski control. In these activities the participants were able to ask questions and discussed a variety of possible pathways and outcomes at each station. The last presentation focused on the role of the Race Secretary, some times referred to as Race Administrator, and how that has changed as transition to paperless race documentation.
This event is truly a community building exercise. Event organizers, volunteers, officials, some coaches and NENSA staff spend the weekend building relationships through activities and personal interactions, which improve our ability to work together successfully to put on events all across the region. We are very grateful to have such an engaged community helping to support the grass roots of our sport. A huge thank is deserved for all the participants for sharing their passion, ideas and expertise to make this a very successful Event Organizer and TD Seminar. Many thanks are also due to the Oak Hill Outdoor Center staff who worked with us to host this event!
