by appbigcountry » Tue Apr 08, 2008 9:28 am
I wasn't at this event, but I have found this thread extremely interesting. One thing that seems to keep popping up for me is the different persepectives that people had on the weekend being directly associated with their age.
A lot of the people on this board that are older, out of college, and were more on the presenting side of the weekend didn't really seem to get the feeling that there was any sort of funny business going on, other than the terrible scheduling.
Looking at this as if it really was some sort of way to bring people into their little group, this is to be expected. You all are older, wiser, and most importantly, less impressionable.
The people who felt the most uncomfortable and pressured were the college students. That's who these groups want to target, not the older, more established people. There are a lot of college students that can be pretty easily manipulated. If somebody tells you that you need to sign a waiver or give your SSN if you want to be able to perform or be a part of this weekend (or something like that), most students are going to comply because they want to take part in what sounds like a kickass a cappella event.
I'm more interested in what the people from the college groups have to say about the weekend. I think that's where we'll really get into the meat of what happened.
Also, just from a devil's advocate point of view, the two Acappella Innovations events are a textbook example of how to hook people. When someone posted things about NVIXM before the first one, people were wary, but at the actual event it was nothing but a great time. Right, that's because they don't want to scare people away the first time, they want them to think it's something that they should come back to. Enter the second, hastily put together event. People come back because they had a great time before, only this time things are a little different and there's an amount of pressure being applied to certain induviduals. Of course there will be another event coming up in the coming months, can you imagine how that will go?