Maggie Rants [and Raves]

Playing Hooky

by Maggie Franklin | October 5, 2011 | Bookmark +

I did not attend the nails-only tradeshow in Sacramento, Calif., on Sunday even though I had been looking forward to the show and had, in fact, booked my hotel room several months ago.

 

The Sacramento show has become the BF’s and my "go-to" show of the year. The BF loves Old Town Sacramento — even if he doesn't attend the show with me, Sacramento has lots of diversions to occupy him while I wander through the show. There's an excellent train museum, a river filled with boats, the Amtrak station, and two really cool bridges — one that swings and one that lifts — all within walking distance. Not to mention Old Town, which is filled with fun touristy shops and vintage, late 19th-century charm.

 

This year, the Sacramento show also denoted the beginning of the 2012 competition season.

 

I was looking forward to getting back into the competition habit, albeit with a more relaxed approach that, hopefully, will keep it fun. Which, for me, mostly means focusing on the art competitions.

 

So after the big end-of-season awards ceremony at the IBS show in Las Vegas, I spent much of my time faithfully checking the competition website, waiting for updates on the 2012 season.

 

When the new season was posted, I was pretty disappointed that there were no nail art competitions listed for the Sacramento show. Especially since the Sacramento show was supposed to earn double points toward the big Cup this season. But that was the beginning of my wrestling with the notion of not attending.

 

With the dwindling exhibitor participation at this show over the last few years (and I've written several times about how I feel about that) I was having a hard time justifying the cost of entry just to shop among a handful of distributors for the same products I can get locally for the same prices. The math just wasn't working out for me.

 

I put out a post on Facebook to see who would be there, if anyone wanted to hang out, etc. And then, just on a whim, I checked the competition website again — only to find that nail art competitions had been added to the line-up since the last time I checked.

 

I was not amused. I feel that I did my due diligence by checking the website repeatedly until it was updated with the new season. That included not just which competitions would be held at which events, but listed the themes for each nail art competition at each event.

 

It's important to get this information as soon as possible if you plan on participating, because it takes hours — days, even weeks — of work to complete a nail art entry. So finding out only 48 hours before entries would be due that the schedule had been updated to include nail art means a lot of hopping up and down and yelling was going on in this little studio salon.

 

I know there are some who will tell me that it's my own fault for not checking back regularly to see if there had been any changes — but why would I when the entire season gets posted at once? With all the competitions and all their themes? And I signed up for the "competition newsletter" some time ago; if changes were made, shouldn't that be the very reason for having a newsletter?

 

Well. I missed out on a chance to participate in competitions that I enjoy entering, the competitions missed out on my entry fees, and I opted for the train museum over the show altogether.

 

I don't know when the information on the site changed but I don't think I'm the one who dropped the ball here. I'm chalking it up to a lesson learned — one of those "if you want something done right" types — so I guess I have to start checking the competition schedule as often as I check Facebook because I might be disappointed, but I still want to compete.

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