As the meeting began we thought it was going to be a rather small group, but as time passed attendance grew to thirteen.
Who was there:
Everyone had many things to include in the what's happening part of the meeting. It sounds like business is picking up for most of us after a fairly quiet summer. Our goal at the meeting was to talk about second characters. Jim Cooke, who put his two cents in via email commented "...one character is too much.", but is developing John Quincy Adams as a new character anyway. The consensus seemed to be that taking on the research, script developement and final production is just plain a lot of work so you better love your new character as much as you did your first.
Discussion digressed to marketing related topics. NACA ( National Association for Campus Activities http://naca.org/ ) came up. Adam felt their showcase seemed to be geared mainly towards strict entertainment and a better way to get into the college circuit is to try to find specific departments within schools that your program meshes with. There doesn't seem to be a lot of money for our kind of programs around in colleges though so this may be a hard market to crack. I brought up the PTO Today conference ( http://www.ptotoday.com/ ) as a possable place to market, however it appears attending their meeting has not produced many if any jobs for people who have attended. We have had a presence for the last few years at NELA (the New England Library Association http://www.nelib.org/ ) and several of us have gotten quite a few bookings from having our material at their conference. Since this seems to work, we're going to keep on getting the SoloTogether information out there.
One other topic, the perennial topic, how should prices be set. While this ultimately has to be a personal decision, based upon how performers manage their own business, Adam had a nice way of broaching the subject of cost with people seeking your services. When you quote your price add "Is that in your budget?" This can help lessen sticker shock, while opening discussion on the value of your work.
That's about it for this meeting. If anyone can think of something I missed let me know and I'll add it. If you've got events coming up, send them along so I can put them on the calendar and check out the calendar once in a while and attend a performance of one of our members.
Mike Francis