Arena Show

[CubScoutJo]

Incidently, the guy who won the phone for the ScoutQuest thing in DC was an adult leader as well.

 

Jo

[Eagle92]

Base,

Having worked staff at large scouting events, ok not as large as Jambo but with 12000+, I don't have a problem with YOUTH staff participating in a contest on stage for several reasons, if their expereinces haev been remotely close to mine.

 

They have been busting butt before the contingents arrived, during the week, and will be there tearing down after contingents leave. I see it as a reward for all their hard work.

 

Also there is a little more "control" using staff rather than a someone random fromthe audience. I've learned the hard way that having folks preselected and prepared for the show is a lot easier than doign random selctions at an event. it eats up time, can cause problems with nervous scouts, equipment, etc, AND can prevent some heartache when you picked all you can and there are folks still wanting to participate.

 

 

[qwazse]

I doubt these were pre-selected. It's one thing for a skit, but when prizes are involved there are serious legal issues with saying you're having a contest then "rigging" the outcome. In fact, depending on the state rules for participation and expected odds have to be posted somewhere. (Thus all the fine print on candy wrappers with "Wonka" type games.)

[sailingpj]

Just so you all know us staff earned the opportunity to get the t-shirt by winning the previous game. They split the audience into four sections and threw out four big beach balls and had a race to see which section could get it to a designated point first. The staff section just had better coordination and aim. Also, there were no non-staff in the section they were launching the t-shirts into.

 

In my tent we had three people who worked backstage at the arena and they said that both guys got an IPad.

 

On another note, if you see a white blotch anywhere in the sea of tan that was the audience you are looking at the Sea Scout youth staff. We were there in our dress whites. It was awesome.

[SR540Beaver]

I only have the 2005 arena show to compare to the 2010 arena show. The 2010 show was far more relevant to the youth than 2005. What I recall of the youth in our troop in 2005, the bulk of the show was boring and hokey, but the fireworks was outstanding. In 2010, having Mike Rowe and Switchfoot were huge hits with our troop, but the fireworks were not as great. Oddly, they claimed that the 2010 fireworks was the biggest ever done on a militart base. My recollection was that 2005's fireworks was a much larger and longer display, but I could be wrong.

 

While I too would have preferred to see youth on stage for the competition, keep in mind that the staff takes their personal vacation time and pays the same Jambo fee as the youth participants to go work long hours in the heat doing some "dirty jobs". While they are "staff", they are also "participants".

 

As far as AT&T's presence......who cares. They invested millions of dollars for our benefit. It would be wrong of us to not recognize their efforts on our behalf. The contingent troop I was with had made a decision to ban cell phones for youth. Parents complained and we changed our stance, but made some hard and fast usage rules. Our council had a blog page set up for the contingent leaders to use and I was my troops designated blogger. I can't tell you how many parents came up to me at the airport yesterday with sincere thank you's for reporting our adventure and them being able to follow it. The live stream and cable coverage of the arena show was also a big hit with folks back home. AT&T made much of that possible and absorbed a lot of the cost in support of scouting. It would be rude of BSA to not recongnize that.

 

As far as the President not showing, I too made my feelings known in another thread. I will be brief here and say thank God he didn't. Bush came in 2005 and it was a distraction and interruption and wasted a day of valuable time. I would be perfectly happy if BSA never invited any President.

[Twocubdad]

View from the cheap seats:

 

Don't know, we couldn't see a thing. For some reason, many staff and visitors were allowed in the arena early. All that was left for our Scouts was an area designated as "visitor overflow seating." We were hosed to the extent that the program staff arranged a video feed for us to watch the show Monday night in our subcamp.

 

And please don't take this wrong, Mike, but if your son was in row 15, he was taking a seat designated for the Southern Region. Not that it was his fault -- things were just that screwed up.

 

Overall, however, (and based largely on watching the video) the Saturday night show was 100% better than the Wednesday morning show. Gates was great Wednesday, but that show was obvious produced by a bunch of old farts to give Mazooka & Co. lots of face time.

 

Saturday was designed to entertain the troops. It worked. Our guys who saw the show (we told our Scouts to buddy-up and go scalp seats where they could see) raved about it.

 

Everyone, however, thought the video game was lame, but figured it was just a filler to reset the stage for the band. The live show wasn't nearly as commercial as the video feed. There were differences between the two, the AT&T logo on the bottom of the screen, for example. AT&T had a strong presence at the Jamboree, but the overall impression was that they were there working their butts off to provide tech services, not some cheesy commercial plug. Telephone signals were great although Wifi less so (no Internet in my campsite, but good at the subcamp HQ). There were several AT&T stations around the Jambo, including one in our subcamp, providing phone and computer service as well as charging stations for individuals' devices.

[Tokala]

I got to sit up front with the OA Service Corps, since my job was to support them, the PaceSetters, Mysterium Compass and the Indian Village. I got a laugh out of "Mazucca" rappelling down the stage scaffolding and quickly adding 40# and a staff hat.

 

I thought the show was 60-90 minutes too long. Scouts had marched since 4pm and were there until 11pm. A lot of the show was fluff. Seemed like the one segment was just a cheap ripoff of Disney's High School Musical type shows.

 

Mike Rowe did a great job talking about joining Scouts and how it affected his life. Definitely the highlight of the show. Could have done without the rest other than the fireworks, and I even like Switchfoot.

[BadenP]

I agree with Tokala, except for Mike Rowe's talk I was unimpressed with the show that should have been showcasing a major milestone in BSA history. Instead the show, and the jamboree as a whole, was a bunch of cheap poorly done theatrics and crass commercialism. Even the CSE with his own stage fraud stunt did little more than cheapen even further the whole event. IMHO National once again screwed up what should have been one of the youths greatest scouting memories into something amateurish and ridiculous. Did you noticed just how little press coverage there was of the jamboree nationally this time around? My crew were not too impressed either. Sad, sad, sad.