Posted by Dennis AsKew on July 11, 2002 at 07:22:21:
Greetings all!
The question came up about ITEC 2003 on the tubaeuph listserv, and I thought I would post my response here before it comes up again....
As the new Conference Coordinator for ITEA, let me put forth a definitive answer on this (although it’s been touched on many times before)
ITEC’s will happen for the foreseeable future only in even years. Which means the next one will be in 2004. In Budapest, Hungary. Late July.
A bit of history on this, from my standpoint. ITEC’s were originally run at a three year interval. As membership in the organization grew, etc., it was decided to go to a yearly schedule. This began in 1995, and ended this year. The only year missed was 1999, and that was due to the extreme illness of one of the co-hosts, who later died. (for those wondering, David Randolph and I were to co-host, and have it at the University of Georgia—leukemia weakened him to a point that he literally was told by his doctors not to do it.)
Along the way, crowds thinned, manufacturers and vendors were tapped quite a bit in getting to and from the shows, not always at a profit (usually at a loss), and it was determined that going every other year would be an appropriate way to go. To offset this, a series of regional conferences was put into place and are scheduled from February to July of 2003. I’ll list those below.
We’re already working on the 2005 regional sites, and 2006 ITEC will return to the US. I do not know if we are headed to only having ITEC in the US every four years. I doubt it. The reason (and the only real reason as far as I see it) that ITEC will be in Hungary in 2004 is that Janos Mazura (the host) cam up with a GREAT proposal that was complete, made sense, and filled in lots of questions with appropriate answers. The other proposals received were not as well thought out, not as complete, and did not meet all the requirements for hosting as well as Janos’ did. Period.
A couple of other thing about all this: Please realize that nothing is or ever will be perfect about our conferences. We do the best we can with usually VERY limited budgets. Timing of these conferences is usually entirely up to the host facility, which in most cases is a college, conservatory or university campus, which means in order to get the cheap building use, we have to schedule around that school’s calendar and fit in where we can. Sometimes facilities work for us, sometimes we have to make do. No host makes a salary on this, and many former hosts have gone into the hole money wise. We do the best we can.
As I expect to be in this position for a few years, please feel free to contact me with any questions, statements or emotional outbursts. I’ll try to answer as best I can.
Thanks,
Dennis AsKew
The regionals for 2003 are as follows:
Army Tuba/Euphonium Conference/Washington DC/Jan. 22-25
Great Plains Tuba/Euphonium Conference/Kansas City Conservatory/February 14-16
Southeast Tuba/Euphonium Conference/University of Alabama/Feb. 21-23
Northeast Tuba/Euphonium Conference/University of Massachusetts/March 21-23
Midwest Tuba/Euphonium Conference/Ball State University/March 21-23
Western Canada Tuba/Euphonium Conference/University of Regina May 2-4
Texas Regional Tuba/Euphonium Conference/Texas Christian University/May 15-18
Southwest Tuba/Euphonium Conference/University of Arizona/June 6-8
Harvey Phillips Big Brass Bash/Central Washington University/July 11-13