Today I have been reflecting on all of the ways we can improve the registration process if we offer the Digital Writing Retreat again in the future.  For example, I think it would be much more seamless if the registration was done online via an online open-source registration tool.  In that way, participant information would be archived digitally in one area and all of the facilitators involved in the set up and organization of the retreat would have easy access to vital information such as housing needs, vehicle information, the school district and specific school and grade level and subject taught by each participant.   E mail is old-school, as they say.  It is too hard to extract the vital data needed to organize simple things.  We use Gmail and things tend to get lost in Gmail because of the threading of conversations and the presentation of those conversations in a staggered overlapping view. 

Tonight, I find myself very frustrated by communcation failures that have resulted in a lot of extra work and worry.

I also find myself frustrated at the number of cancellations we have had.  We set a goal of fifteen participants and I believe we will have ten or fewer.  I had a cancellation as recently as twenty minutes ago.  I am beginning to think that this type of workshop/retreat should require some financial vesting of the particpants.  I do not have any research to quote, but I do know that studies have shown that people, in general, do not value "free" things.   Perhpas if the registration process involved a refundable deposit, we would have fewer cancellations.

This is a very utilitarian blog post tonight, but, I mentioned to the participants that these blogs will serve as a space for archiving our experiences and reflecting upon them.  At this point, my experience with the workshop has been very administrative.  I have also done hours of research and have spent a good deal of time organizing a wiki page to help keep our resources organized for next week.

Hopefuly, tomorrow's blog will be a bit more energetic and full of anticipation for Monday morning.  However, tonight has been a night to reflect upon areas that definitely need to be improved upon to make the set up go smoothly.