Rubbout Recovery

It's now 48 hours after Rubbout's completion. I am very happy to say Rubbout 20 - XX Rated has been deemed a great success, and despite a few logistical glitches here and there, things ran quite well. The fact that this year's party was twice (and in some cases, triple) the size of previous years with the inclusion of some events that had never been done before on the Rubbout weekend, we are generally happy with the how things turned out. It looks like we sold out at the Slick Dance, and after the numbers are crunched, I really hope we have an event in the black...wouldn't that be appropriate? :)

The crew that put on Rubbout 20 is completely comprised of volunteers. We hired an event producer to manage the Slick Dance, but other than that all nine events were put together by a hard-core team here in Vancouver that consistently stops at nothing to get this event up and flying. I can't thank the volunteers and organizing group enough for what they did to get the Rubbout 20 weekend to what it ended up being. I think there will be lots of guys heading back to their home cities around North America and Europe with lots of great stories to tell about their wild weekend in Vancouver.

We have so many good and bad points to take away and table in our debriefing meeting this weekend. Mitch, Rob, Doug...I can't thank you guys enough for all the effort you put into making this happen! I am excited about working with Doug and Rob on next year's event...we will be a force to be reckoned with (with Mitch's behind-the-scenes guidance, of course).

I can certainly appreciate why Mitch wants to step down from lead organizer role after Rubbout 20. It is so much work to put something like this on. I am still groggy and fighting cancres and cold sores due to the stress and sleeplessness this event created for me prior to and during the weekend. I think I remember where all the bruises can from...

Granted that the scope of this event was double what had ever been previously done, but there was so much to contend with.

Looking at my own performance over the weekend, I learned so much about myself and took a big leap forward in my event planning and coordinating skills since I had never done anything like this before either. Prior to this my expertise was in organizing sporting events; the running event at the 2008 Calgary North America Outgames, numerous years of planning Stage Races on behalf of my cycling team in Calgary and of course numerous seasons of team coordination as President and Treasurer of the cycling team over the course of seven years. I have a lot to take away from this event both personally and professionally. I didn't realize how big of a control freak I am until I had to deal with problems with the events I was coordinating. I also realized that you can depend on some people to follow through with what they say they will, and others, not so much. You definitely need to determine this beforehand, however.

The outcome of an event cannot be taken personally. You are never going to make everyone happy, and some people are going to point out things that irritate them or blow them away that you will never have thought of.

I am excited about the next decade of Rubbout. I get enthusiastic thinking about where the event may head in the next couple of years, the next five, the next ten. I think having it in Vancouver gives us a unique opportunity/challenge to keep it fresh and new since the Village is generally concentrated and the businesses that support the event seem to appear and disappear as quickly as the participants on the weekend do! :D

So...for those of you that couldn't make it this year, I hope you will consider coming next year. I really can't see Rubbout becoming anything but bigger and better!

In the meantime, I am going to spend this week sleeping and recovering. I will eventually write up my weekend review, but for right now I am just enjoying having nothing to do in the evenings but hang out with Mr. P and start getting back to my normal routine again. As you might suspect, I had absolutely no time to take pictures but you can be assured there will be more than enough of them appearing on the Net over the next couple of weeks.