[Killietalk] Foreign show shipments -- lets try it one more time!!!

["Koran, David HQ02" <David_Koran at hq02.usace.army.mil>]

I recently submitted an announcement to the August BNL about foreign show
participation.  I know the Chairman's message talks about establishing a
protocol but the window for shipping to the remaining shows for this year is
rapidly closing.  Starting with the Dutch (KFN) show the last weekend of this
month, the Italian show 3 weeks later is followed a weekend apart by the
Scandinavian (SKS), British (BKA) and then most probably by the French and
Portugese.  Last year Brian Perkins, Dick Martino and myself took it on
ourselves to coordinate shipments to these shows.  We have announced this and
lets say we got luke warm support.  This is sort of you get what you pay for.
Before developing that point, I will again work as a point man on these
shipments for I hope to get something to all of the shows even if I am the
only one doing it.  I order to make it in time for the shows I need to ship
at least two weeks before the show (most probably on the Saturday) so I need
to receive your fish that Friday in order to package them into the shipment.
E-mail me if you intend to participate at the address above or at
killie at solo_net so I know something is in the mail.

Before we depended on the N&RSC to supply fish at a Convention we would get
fish from foreign clubs.  Just like we view box exchanges between affiliate
clubs over here, you can consider this a box exchange from another club
usually with a much different assortment of fish they produce.  Maybe because
I was newer at the time I felt that foreign entries were usually something
new or (as you could see in the prices they brought in auction) other AKA'ers
felt it would be a good introduction of new genetic stock into lines they
were producing.  There are two factors at work but I think we always
benefitted from the male ego aspect of things where there was the
one-upmanship of showing that they could produce bigger or newer fish than we
could.  As our response became less and less and then nothing at all, I think
it became easy for them to say "yeah, we do produce better fish so why waste
them on someone who isn't reciprocating!"  We may have reached a point where
from the "other side of the pond" they say why should I go through all of the
bother and expense of sending good fish when I (we) see nothing in return.

You might ask why is any of this important.  It is rare when someone in the
AKA does an African collecting trip.  We don't have "colonial ties" to any
country, our air fare to pull off a trip is much more costly and we really
don't do much of a good job establishing what we do bring back.  We have the
old Fritos mentality, we can always get more.  Being a hobbyist in the 70's
and 80's we always depended on European collectors to bring stuff back and
then breed it and sell it to refinance additional trips.  We got some of
those fish by N&RSC exchanges but also through bringing over speakers who
were collectors.  But we also did something else in occasionally bring over
guys who weren't necessarily big collectors but good breeders who canvassed
their national organization to bring a great selection of fish to our shows.
By not priming the pump and sending stuff over there, there is much less
likelihood another breeder will contribute his or her fish to a collection of
fish traveling with that invited speaker.


Finally, I don't want to sour my argument either but if we are going to send
anything please don't make it "pet store" killies.  Most shops they patronize
in Europe carry that stuff too.  If you aren't going to enter that juvenile
guentheri or striatum in a local show do you really think sending it 4-5000
miles to a different venue is going to make it more valuable?  Remember guys
and gals, its our reputation at stake.

Rah, rah, rah ...AKA

Dave Koran

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