Followup message from the AAW Board of Directors
September 4, 2005

From Angelo J. Iafrate
Conference Committee - Chair
and Jeff Jilg
Conference Committee member

As we completed this Symposium report, hurricane Katrina had just hit much of the south, destroying much of New Orleans and surrounding areas. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this hurricane throughout their trials and upcoming rebuilding efforts.

Symposium Results
Well! If you were not in Kansas City for the 2005 Symposium of the American Association of Woodturners you missed the Largest Woodturning Symposium in the world!

Overland Park was another successful AAW conference. It provided a great annual venue for learning and experiencing woodturning. The heartland of America provided some very warm weather (110 degrees with blustery winds) and a wonderful conference facility (some say the best facility yet) with air conditioning that brought a chill.

Another plus, for Texas attendees, was a stunning victory from Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France during the last day of the conference. There were many who were distracted by the event in the Cyber Café. We never knew so many woodturners were also cycling aficionados!

Attendance and Food Consumption
As you can imagine, it was another record year for the AAW for symposium statistics. Here are some of the big numbers!

1,016 pre-registered attendees, 115 on-site registrations for a record total of 1,131 attendees.

These numbers place Overland Park FIRST in the top 10 largest Symposia for attendance. Over the three-day period our members consumed an astonishing amount of food. At the Symposium site, alone:

We ate 189 hot dogs and 297 hamburgers, we grazed through 89 salads (last year was 298) and munched our way through 722 deli sandwiches

These figures only represent food purchased at the Convention Center. It's anyone's guess how much was consumed elsewhere. We can say, that if you followed the example of the Board, you ate a lot of barbecue at K.C. Masterpiece, which is located just a few blocks from the Convention Center.

The Continental Breakfast was a popular feature repeated from the 2004 symposium. This year it was enormous! Four large tables served up everything from mountains of fresh fruit and countless muffins and danish. Coffee and tea was dispensed from lagre vats. My personal favorite were the poppy seed muffins.

As if the morning Breakfast Buffet did not provide enough food and drink Our members drank an additional 304 bottles of water. Additionally, we drank 2,080 soft drinks (including bottled water, juice, and milk) an increase of 257 over last year. Maybe the warm weather and increase number of attendees helped inflate these figures.

Demonstrations
The 1,131 attendees were able to see 158 rotations from 38 presenters, representing 6 countries. The biggest difficulty was choosing which ones to see and which ones to miss. One helpful hint is to see which of the presenters will be videotaped for the AAW. These presenters will be shown as featured demonstrators on the symposium videos which will be available in Fall 2005. We continue to post updated rotation grids on the website right up until the conference each year.

Last year was our first year with the new 4-camera set up in each demo room. This year we experimented with the location of the cameras. We set them up a little differently this year. We had one looking down at the head stock, one looking up from the tail stock. One focused on the grinder and the other set for the sketch pad. We had high expectations for this system but learned that, as the attendance grows, the television monitors are not adequate for the size of the crowd. Next year we will try to have more digital projectors and large projection screens. With these new changes, some submitted from attendees suggestions, you should not have to miss a single cut, grind or hand drawn sketch!

A special thanks goes out to Deryl Duer, who, single handedly not only kept all of our cameras up and running but broke down the A/V for THREE demonstration rooms Saturday night for a wedding and had them back and running again the next morning before the first rotation took place!

While we are at it, there was a small army of volunteers that help pull this Symposium together. There were 230 to be exact. All of the names are listed on the website here. Not only did these volunteers do the day to day tasks that all need doing like; cleaning shavings, moving lathes, setting up and breaking down the demo rooms. They also enlisted the help of their spouses to help with registration, sell tee shirts and run the Instant Gallery. Be sure, it is no small task, but the hard work and diligence of the numerous chapters paid off with one of the most successful Symposiums in history. Our deepest gratitude and sincere thanks to all that rolled up their sleeves to get the job done.

(Letter continued)
Lectures
This year, too, we had several lectures scheduled for a classroom room type presentation. There was no lathe in this room but instead had rows of desks and chairs for presentations like, design influences, plagiarizim and developing a curriculum for teaching woodturning in the growing number of schools that are starting after school or during turning programs.

Youth turning
This year the AAW sponsored its first ever youth turning workshop. 21 lathes were donated to support two groups of youths (ages 10 to 17). The youths were tutored by experienced woodturners including Bonnie Klein and Gary Lansinger. This was a rewarding experience for both the kids and the tutors alike! At the end of the 2nd day (Saturday) a random drawing was held and 21 youthful participants were selected to receive the very lathes, tools, and chucks they had used during the workshop. Overall this was an extraordinarily popular workshop which the AAW intends to replicate in the future. To see some pictures from the event click here.

New AAW Products
Two new AAW products were made available during the symposium in the AAW products table.

Techniques and Projects IV, 1999-2001

Techniques and Projects V, 2003-2004

These new project books will help beginners and experts alike. There are a rich diversity of projects contained in each new book. For more details and ordering check out the AAW products page

Trade Show
Anyone who visited the Trade Show was bombarded with new machinery, new turning tools and wood, wood, wood from 48 vendors occupying 87 booths over a total of 29,000 square feet of floor space! It was akin to a feeding frenzy as turners bought, sold and traded all manner of turning related items.

Instant Gallery
Our instant Gallery featured ~720 entries from those who attended, including samples of work from all of our demonstrators. The Instant Gallery covered an additional 29,000 square feet of space. To make the demonstrators more identifiable, next year we will feature the work of our demonstrators on a special demonstrator's table inside the Instant Gallery.

Chapter Collaborative Challenge and Juried Exhibition
We had NINE entrants into the Chapter Collaborative out of 248 Chapters. This year we have already published the rules for the 2006 Collaborative. The rules for 2006 are exactly the same as the rules for 2005. The 2006 rules are located here.

(For future reference, the 2005 rules were published on 9/1/04 in the AW Journal, the AAW website, the AAW text forum, and the AAW email list (on Yahoo)).
(More reference - the 2006 rules were published on 8/31/05 in the AW journal, the text forum, the AAW website, and emailed directly to the chapters).

We NEED your participation in order to continue this important aspect of the Symposium! It would be sorely missed if it were not held at all. So c'mon chapter Presidents get you clubs motivated. Let's make Louisville the strongest showing yet for the Chapter Collaborative!

In addition to all of this, our juried show, "reTURN to the Land of OZ" showcased 47 works from 43 artists from 4 countries. If you took the time to visit, these works were the cream of the crop and showcased the diversity of possibility in woodturning. In case you missed it in Overland Park, the show has traveled to our new AAW office and Gallery. The show can be viewed there from September 16th through December 16th, 2005. Pictures from the exhibition can be seen here.

Banquet and Summary
Our Saturday night banquet included over 1,300 hungry participants. After the banquet, at our annual EOG fund-raising auction, we auctioned a 122 pieces for a record setting $68,000! The total for EOG from the banquet auction including the live auction and the silent auction was $70,004. Our hats are off to the effort put forward by our own John Hill who was the auctioneer. John had a sore throat during the night of the auction but he persevered and carried through during the entire auction. (We also thank all of the successful bidders for an extraordinary show of generosity).

If you think these symposium results are impressive, you should have been there to experience the rush, first hand. Louisville, Kentucky promises to be yet another extraordinary event. Mark your calendars now and join us for an unforgettable first hand experience. You will never forget it. Details for the 2006 Symposium will be posted in the American Woodturner Journal and updated on the AAW website on the 2006 Symposium page.

Respectfully submitted,
Angelo J. Iafrate
Conference Committee - Chair
and
Jeff Jilg
Conference Committee member

Youths Woodturning

at the 21 donated lathes
during the 2005 Symposium