Contest ideas requested

[Ash Barns]

BonsaiChat. org runs a Bonsai of the Month competition which is open to its members to display their own trees. No prizes, as it is just for fun, which is how it should be. It took me a long time to persuade the admin to make it anonymous but we got over the line on that. What makes that so sweet is that the main winner time after time was my mate pup (Derek Oakley) and Ledanta had a couple of wins as well. I came second once but it is the best fun you could have without going to Luna Park.

Bonsai should be fun, as we are all at different stages of development and it will give us goals to reach. This is conducted by a poll and does increase traffic on the site. AusBonsai of the Month sounds like a good title.

Ash

[Steven]

AusBonsai of the Month sounds like a good title.
Ash

Sounds like a good idea to me. Does anyone else agree? What conditions should we place on the entry's?

Steven

[Bretts]

I stll like my idea

[PeterW]

BonsaiChat. org runs a Bonsai of the Month competition which is open to its members to display their own trees. No prizes, as it is just for fun, which is how it should be. It took me a long time to persuade the admin to make it anonymous but we got over the line on that. What makes that so sweet is that the main winner time after time was my mate pup (Derek Oakley) and Ledanta had a couple of wins as well. I came second once but it is the best fun you could have without going to Luna Park.

Bonsai should be fun, as we are all at different stages of development and it will give us goals to reach. This is conducted by a poll and does increase traffic on the site. AusBonsai of the Month sounds like a good title.

Ash

Sounds good.

[Ash Barns]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Does anyone else agree? What conditions should we place on the entry's?

Steven[/quote]


I think picture quality is important (not studio) to show the tree at its best. Trees should be shown in bonsai pots. Winning trees may not be shown again. If your tree didn't win it can be re-entered in future contests. One vote only for members in a poll. Absolutely no comments from members while the poll is ongoing.

Ash

[PeterW]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Does anyone else agree? What conditions should we place on the entry's?

Steven

I think picture quality is important (not studio) to show the tree at its best. Trees should be shown in bonsai pots. Winning trees may not be shown again. If your tree didn't win it can be re-entered in future contests. One vote only for members in a poll. Absolutely no comments from members while the poll is ongoing.

Ash [/quote]

Youve done this before Ash......lol they all sound good to me.
Regards
Peter

[Jon Chown]

Ash said,
One vote only for members in a poll. Absolutely no comments from members while the poll is ongoing.

I agree with all of this and I also believe that the poll results and the contestants name should hidden until the final day. This will stop the lemming effect which I have noted on other sites.

Jon

[Hector Johnson]

Is there a restriction on species?

If there is then you may cut a lot of potential contestants out of the competition.

[Pup]

There should be no species restrictions. The ratio of votes is always roughly the same on the site that Ashley quoted.
Membership of way over the 100's 25to 27 votes each month.
Also so few submissions last month 4 the month before 3 the month before 2. It would be interesting to see what participation we got. Pup

[Hector Johnson]

I'm OK with participating but I'm not getting into the "instant bonsai" stuff that we so often see on other fora. They're nonsense, creating poor trees for the sake of a competition. The trees I have are as a result of winnowing out the dodgy stuff, not creating more of it for the sake of some ego-stroking competition. There's not much chance of me ever buying some stick in a pot from the local garden supply place, hacking it about, wiring it and then pretending it's on its way to being a bonsai masterpiece.

Perhaps we could look at staging a contest where we assess the development of a tree from one stage to the next... say, from grow pot to finished presentation... one month.
The next month we look at collection to first training pot?
The next month we look at training to first styling.
Then first styling to secondary branching.

The idea is to add more of an educational aspect and to give people with less experience the benefit of seeing what the older hands do and get proper explanations of how they do it. Too much of what I see in the "bonsai community" is churning out cheap starter trees that don't go much further than that in the hands of their owners because there is very little in the way of real developmental training and information shared and explained in careful, patient terms. You get some of it at club demos but they can also tend to be too much at once, as some headline demonstrator creates a showpiece in a couple of hours.