Class Enrollment at ROPECRAFT

The ROPECRAFT Class Enrollment Preference Survey is one tool we use to help make your ROPECRAFT class experiences as fair, welcoming and convenient as possible.

It’s how you save yourself time you’d otherwise waste standing in line at the event by entering enrollment pools ahead of time for classes you’d like to attend.

It also gives us information that helps us work with your instructors to make sure our classrooms have the right sizes and equipment for the right number of people. No more guessing what might be packed. We know, and we’ve planned for it.

We want to give everyone the best experience we possibly can and we’ve found that this is a powerful tool for helping with that.

The ROPECRAFT Survey Video

with Graydancer and Ozma of Oz

Frequently Asked Questions

Before the Event

The survey is a short form that you fill out that tells us which classes you would like to attend and who (if anyone) you plan to attend them with.

Your survey gets delivered via email to the address you specified for ROPECRAFT correspondence when you bought your ticket! If you registered on or before September 10th, you received this email on 9/10/2019 from [email protected] via SurveyMonkey.com as a sender. If you register after 9/10/19, you’ll get your survey emailed to you the evening that you register. This system is not automated so my best estimate on send time is “after my smallest kid goes to bed and I get myself a bowl of ice cream”.

Have questions? Email [email protected]!

Right now! Don’t wait!

The sooner you start telling us what you’d like to attend, the more likely it is that we’ll be able to get classes and equipment set up to accommodate you and give you the best chances of doing what you’d like to. There are no guarantees but you help yourself and everyone out by letting us know as soon as possible.

Filling out the survey is the way you enter Enrollment Pools for the classes you are interested in and save yourself the time and uncertainty of waiting in line on the day of class!

We draw names from those pools using a computer program that is blind, fair and instantaneous to fill spots for our classes and generate Door Lists. This saves you time waiting in line AND lets us work to assign classes and event equipment in such a way that as many folks get the opportunity to attend what they would like to as possible.

An Auditor is a person who observes the class without doing the hands-on portion of it. A Participant is someone who plans on participating in all aspects of the class (using a hard point or floor work floor space). For our convention, we generally see the most Auditing in suspension-based classes for which there are limited hard points available and teaching limitations on the number of folks who can be accommodated or floor work classes where a certain square footage is required per person or group to perform the activity.

We’ll use information from the survey on crowd interest to assign popular classes to large rooms and arrange equipment to accommodate as many interested people as is possible. We also cap our crowds to the number of people that our instructors have told us they are comfortable teaching for each class if they have specified so the people who do attend the class get a good class.

No big deal!

BEFORE THE EVENT:

You are welcome to change your mind on which enrollment pools you are entering as many times as you’d like before 9 am CST on Friday, October 4th. Keep your emailed survey link in a safe spot and use it to change your entries.

AT THE EVENT:

If it’s after 9 am CST on Friday, October 4th, it’s too late to change your pool entries BUT you can still trade classes with other folks at the Meet and Greet on Friday night or a half hour before class join what we call “Standby” Lines to see if there is room for you in any classes you are interested in. How to do this: Just go stand by the door of the class you hope to attend and our door monitors will work with your instructors to make room if it is possible!

Historically speaking, for the vast majority of classes we have held we have been able to find room for folks in the standby lines to at least watch if not participate in the classes they are waiting for. Your chances of getting into a popular class from the Standby Line are obviously best the nearer you are to the front of that Standby Line!

On Friday, we will email you to tell you if you are enrolled in the classes you selected and post the the door lists in the common areas before class time on Saturday. If you signed up to attend with another person, the identity of that second person will be revealed ONLY via email or by asking Ozma, the help desk or the door monitors to clarify.

“I’m on the list! Now what?”  You may attend this class without worrying about whether there will be space available!  Just head to the door five or ten minutes before class time.

“I’m on the list, but I changed my mind.”  You can choose to attend a different class- just check the board to see what is open or join the standby line for anything you like!

“I’m NOT on the list! I really wanted to attend this class!” You can join the standby line for your preferred class. The odds of you getting in are good – last year, everyone in standby lines got into the classes they hoped to to at least observe.

“Can I trade a class with someone who was selected for the class I want?” Sure! Find Ozma at least one hour before classes start. Both of you must be on door lists for a class and we can only swap same enrollment types. If you plan to participate with another person, you must be swapping a spot with someone else who also has a participation space with another person.

The short answer is that some parts of this make more space for you where you want to be even before you get to the event.

When we can anticipate crowds ahead of time, we can put classes where they fit the best based on our available equipment, attendee interest, room sizes and instructor needs and also give a heads up to the instructors about what to plan for in terms of crowd size. Sometimes popularity or class type means that something is unavoidably popular, but those things that are avoidably crowded we plan for!

If you want to get the best chances of getting what you want, the very first thing you want to do is participate in the survey. Seriously. It’s five minutes, maybe ten.

The very first question about classes on the survey asks you what you want to do the very most. This is the class that you will automatically be on the Door List for. No Enrollment Pools, no random draws, you’re just on the list. Make sure you do that question, as our highest priority slots draw from this and only this. 

Next our program fills spots as random draws from folks who have said they are interested in classes in the Enrollment Pools for each class block. If you really really want to go to this particular class but it wasn’t important enough to be your automatic pick, enter the enrollment pool for it! If you’re going with another person, make sure they enter this pool too so you increase your chances of one of you getting lucky!  If you are not drawn as a Participant, get there early and be at the front of the Standby Line because if a person on the Door List does not show up, you are the next person in line to participate! We try to save you lines where we can for most things but sometimes we can’t. If you really want it, we’ll try our best to work with you. Sometimes (fairly often actually) an instructor is able to work to get everybody in the Standby Line as at least an observer. We’ve never run a class that absolutely everyone on the list showed up for, either.

Technically you have until 9 am central time on October 4th fill your survey out BUT you don’t want to wait until then to start doing this.

The survey itself will only take five or so minutes to click through but the sooner you start doing it, the sooner we know which classes to put in big rooms and get more equipment for and the sooner you’re entered in pools and all set.

Additionally, waiting till the last minute means that if you have technical questions or lose your link and need a new one, we’ll have a really limited window of time in which to trouble-shoot issues. 9 am is a hard close and your survey sender has at least one travel day pre-event where she’ll be driving a great big truck across the country. We’ll do our best to help you anyway but please do your best to find out if you need additional help on a humane timeline for all involved.

Before the event, email [email protected] and she’ll help you out! Please note, if it’s October 2nd or 3rd, travel is a thing. The quality of answer you receive may be directly correlated with the amount of typing time your respondent has.

At the event, ask Ozma or Graydancer in person.

At the Event

Results will be delivered via email during the day on Friday and also posted in the common spaces by Friday evening. Badge names of people you are bringing with you will not appear on the posted lists for privacy reasons but will be listed in your personalized emails.

It means that you were randomly drawn to be one of a limited number of participants for a class or that you chose that class as your one automatic enrollment class.  Your name will be on the Door List and you need to arrive a minimum of 5 minutes ahead of the start time for the class in order to keep your spot.  If you do not have another person listed, your enrollment is solo enrollment.  If you have a second person listed, you may bring that person (and only that person) or choose to attend alone as well.

You must arrive before 5 minutes before class starts in order to get settled and preserve your place on the Door List. Five minutes before classes start, we will open the room to folks in the Standby Line as participants to fill any remaining spaces in the class and room.

This result on your survey results means that you either chose to observe a participation class in the first place OR were not selected for a participation class that you did choose and we thought you might like the option of an observer spot if you’re still interested. You are also welcome to join the Standby Line for this or another class instead in the hopes of scoring a Participant spot! Priority goes first to the folks on the Door List and second to the Standby Line.

As a reminder, an Auditor is a person who observes the class without doing the hands-on portion of it. For our convention, we generally see the most Auditing in suspension-based classes for which there are limited hard points available and teaching limitations (with or without TAs) or floorwork classes where a certain square footage is required per person or group to perform the activity.

It means you were not selected for the class you chose and it is fully enrolled. You may join the standby line for this or any class with a standby line or attend an open class. Check the class board to see which classes are open and available on a standby line!

30 minutes before class, find the door to your class! Think of Standby as standing by the door or sitting or doing what works for you if you prefer. There will be a door monitor to give directions as to where exactly those Standby Lines are. For some classes, they’ll be inside the classroom if there is not room outside of it.

You may attend this class without worrying about whether there will be space available!  You will be on the door list of attendees. Please arrive by 5 minutes before class start time to get comfortable in your space so that the instructor will not have to wait. If you are not there 5 minutes before the class, the class will be opened to those attendees in the standby line and you will lose your spot.

You can choose to attend a different class during this class block – just check the board to see what is open or join the standby line for anything you like! You can also choose to trade this class slot with anyone else!

You can still  join the standby line for your preferred class. The odds of you getting in aren’t 100%, but they’re pretty good and they’re better the closer to the front of the Standby Line you are so if it’s really important to you, do keep that in mind.

You can also trade classes with someone else at the Meet and Greet if you like so make a friend and ask reeeeeeally nicely.

That said, the last two years we did this, everyone who stood in standby lines got into the classes they were waiting for to at least observe if not participate!

Nope.

Here’s why!

If you entered an enrollment pool for a class but weren’t drawn to be a participant, we put you on the Auditor list if there was room there as a courtesy so you could skip the line and at least know you could get in some way. If you don’t want to Audit? No problem! You may join the Standby Line for this class to try your luck at getting a participant spot OR any other OR attend classes that are open with no attendee caps.

That’s not a mistake. Everyone who enters enrollment pools enters as an individual and receives results as an individual.

It’s possible that both of your names could be randomly drawn for the same class OR if you enter different pools that you could both make it into different classes (each planning to bring the other).

It’s also possible that one of your names is on the participant list and one of you is on the audit list. THAT’S OK. As long as you specified that person’s name on your entry, they can come with you. They, however, can only audit if you don’t go with them.

We’re not going to decide for you who to favor and who to take off the list in those cases.  It wouldn’t be fair.  Plus this makes a pair of folks in the Standby Line really happy as it’s a way to build in a few extra spots!