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The use of noise in a silent auction
Jul. 23rd, 2011 11:09 pm(Pinewoods photos will be along eventually. Gotta make 'em all pretty first. Most of them are of mushrooms, so I can understand your impatience.)
Running the silent auction at Pinewoods is something of a thankless job. I'm happy to do it, since it gives me a concrete way of contributing to camp, but the silent auction is overshadowed by the big-event loud auction, run by the charismatic Terry Harvey on Wednesday evening. And some of the people whose items are shuffled into the silent auction are quietly resentful of that fact — despite our best attempts to portray the two auctions as equal-but-separate, it's true that a silent auction item will generally bring in less than it would in the loud auction, if only because it won't have Terry talking it up and goosing the bids.
I spent half of Wednesday afternoon with Terry and DebbieB. J., dividing up the auction items, then spent the other half setting up chairs and risers for the loud auction, then missed half the Wednesday dance writing up bid cards for the silent auction, then ran around Thursday checking on bids and hunting people down who hadn't paid up...and was still hearing nothing but complaints about the arrangement of chairs or the rules for the silent auction or the small errors on the bid cards. Despite Terry's sincere (and sincerely appreciated) thanks I had a bit of "toiling in obscurity" crankiness on my brain.
Late in the process, a somewhat battered E♭ alto horn appeared in the silent auction, and it turned things around for me in three ways: one, it was fun to blow, so everybody wanted to, which drew a lot of attention to the silent auction. (And it very nearly summoned moose.) Two, I used it to make an amusing auction announcement, involving me trying and failing to blow it and finding it stuffed with Cherry Ripe bars (an auction in-joke of long standing). In a very small way, that made the silent auction more of a show, and thus more fun for everyone. Three, the camp's head chef placed an initial $20 bid on the horn, and very quickly was outbid as the generous-to-a-fault Scots pushed the bid toward triple digits. He made moon-eyes at it, and jokingly complained that I drew too much attention to it with my announcement. So, by way of saying thanks for the tasty grub, I used the afternoon to pull ten folks together in a coalition, and won the horn with a bid of $110. I announced the gift at dinner, and was able to run the horn over to the crew's dinner table, blowing a rather flatulent fanfaronade, to raucous applause from the dining hall. The chef was deeply touched, the camp made money, and our coalition felt all warm-n-fuzzy. (Many thanks to any of you who are reading this!)
Lessons learned for next year: bring Post-Its to label the winning items. Do up pre-printed bid cards to save time. Spend less time feeling cranky and sorry for myself. Spend more time making the silent auction fun.
Running the silent auction at Pinewoods is something of a thankless job. I'm happy to do it, since it gives me a concrete way of contributing to camp, but the silent auction is overshadowed by the big-event loud auction, run by the charismatic Terry Harvey on Wednesday evening. And some of the people whose items are shuffled into the silent auction are quietly resentful of that fact — despite our best attempts to portray the two auctions as equal-but-separate, it's true that a silent auction item will generally bring in less than it would in the loud auction, if only because it won't have Terry talking it up and goosing the bids.
I spent half of Wednesday afternoon with Terry and Debbie
Late in the process, a somewhat battered E♭ alto horn appeared in the silent auction, and it turned things around for me in three ways: one, it was fun to blow, so everybody wanted to, which drew a lot of attention to the silent auction. (And it very nearly summoned moose.) Two, I used it to make an amusing auction announcement, involving me trying and failing to blow it and finding it stuffed with Cherry Ripe bars (an auction in-joke of long standing). In a very small way, that made the silent auction more of a show, and thus more fun for everyone. Three, the camp's head chef placed an initial $20 bid on the horn, and very quickly was outbid as the generous-to-a-fault Scots pushed the bid toward triple digits. He made moon-eyes at it, and jokingly complained that I drew too much attention to it with my announcement. So, by way of saying thanks for the tasty grub, I used the afternoon to pull ten folks together in a coalition, and won the horn with a bid of $110. I announced the gift at dinner, and was able to run the horn over to the crew's dinner table, blowing a rather flatulent fanfaronade, to raucous applause from the dining hall. The chef was deeply touched, the camp made money, and our coalition felt all warm-n-fuzzy. (Many thanks to any of you who are reading this!)
Lessons learned for next year: bring Post-Its to label the winning items. Do up pre-printed bid cards to save time. Spend less time feeling cranky and sorry for myself. Spend more time making the silent auction fun.
