Chicago registration full

After massive demand for the 80 available places, the registration for the sailing was filled in only 3 days.

However there is a wait list and the organisers are also looking to provide additional boats. See how to register

The following email from Kevin Bowyer of Co-VP of Chicago Gay Games explains the situation, but in summary:

1. They are trying to find a solution.
2. Fees will be reimbursed if the event is full.
3. They will be back to us as soon as possible with an update.

GLORY is collecting suggestions and will put these forward to the organisers for their registration committee which meets next week.

If there are questions or comments that are related to issues OTHER than the number of boats and slots (e.g. Credit card problems, or other issues, that can be dealt with immediately) then please continue to send them to info@gaygameschicago.org

========================================================== From Kevin Bowyer

Dear Sailing folks; By now many of you know that the online registration system for GGVII is no longer accepting registrations from Sailing Captains, though it is accepting registrations from individuals to be added to boats.

We had anticipated that sailing would be popular and we knew that it would sell out. At this point we've got fewer slots for sailors than our colleagues in Sydney were able to accommodate.

My personal prediction was that sailing would probably become full within 2 weeks. It appears that the available "team captain" slots were filled in less than 3 days. We went live at 6 pm on Thursday, 1 July. We received our first "is sailing closed" email the morning of Sunday, 4 July. I was in over the holiday weekend - twice - to review incoming emails and to make sure that the website seemed to be functioning properly.

The good news is that despite a few problems with a few people, registration seems to be operating quite smoothly. Because this past weekend was a holiday weekend in the USA (with the holiday continuing through Monday, 5 July), not to mention our first weekend of registration, we are really just now able to begin the process of identifying exactly what happened in sailing.

It is 9:45 am in Chicago right now - we hope to have some details for you good people by the end of the day here.

Please ... do not presume that most of the boats that were reserved were done so by Americans. It is certainly possible that this has happened, but until we analyze the registration data we won't know for sure. The timing of our first "registration is live" email actually came at the end of the day here in the USA, first thing Friday morning in Australia (though midnight to 3 am, Thursday night, in Europe).

We thought through the sailing question as we timed registration and decided that sailing would surely not sell out in 12 hours, thus providing our European friends a legitimate chance to register when they woke up the next morning - a regular weekday. Some of you in other countries may have gotten notification later, but if you were on OUR email list, you should have received notification of registration being live during a 24 hour period that included a regular weekday for all worldwide time zones.

Part of the reason we rushed to get the email out on Thursday 1 July was so that we'd have the entire day on Friday - in all time zones - for people to get the email and register before the weekend started. We established an "artificial cap" on sailing so that registrations in sailing would stop before all of the boats were gone.

The purpose of this was to ensure that, unlike we've been told happened in Sydney in 2002, the boats weren't all taken by two or three sailing clubs. Our intent was to review the registration data after the artificial cap was reached and then make some decisions about how to allocate the remaining boats and/or slots.

We have a meeting with our registration team this week. Part of the purpose of that meeting was to train a few of us so that we could access registration data online in real time. My personal goal was to watch sailing registration as it filled up so that, as it reached its capacity, we could send an email to GLORY and others in sailing to give you some idea of how we planned on moving forward.

Obviously, the speed with which you all registered has outstripped our plan. But our good intent is still there - to provide maximum opportunity to participate and to try and be as fair as possible in allocation of any remaining slots.

Our next steps are as follows:

1) Quick review of the registration data to make sure that our cap was, indeed, reached and that there aren't duplicate registrations from Team Captains.

2) Communication back to you (and other sailors not affiliated with GLORY) on the status of registration and what our next steps will be (or at least when to expect our next communication on this).

3) Continued attempts to secure more boats to allow for an expansion of the competition (timeline on this one is uncertain, but we're working on this). I can appreciate people not wanting to register for sailing without knowing if you'd get a slot. If you are a crew member on a boat that HAS secured a Team Captain confirmation number, then you should go ahead and register as a part of that crew.

If you are a Team Captain and are hoping that by registering as a crew member but without a confirmed boat this will get you at the front of the "waiting list," please don't presume that this will guarantee you a slot on a boat or even guarantee that you'll get "first chance" at a boat. We have to balance the need for an international and diverse competition with the need to be good to those who want to sign up early and we will communicate the process to you in a subsequent email.

Until we know the status of the registration data we won't be able to make decisions on how to move forward. If you DO register anyway, we'll do our best to try and figure out a way to accommodate you. But obviously - if you register for an event and there is no slot for you, your registration fee will be reimbursed. Thank you for your patience. We greatly appreciate your support and interest and want to do the right thing here. We'll be in touch soon.

Kevin Boyer, Co-Vice President Gay Games VII - 15-22 July 2006 - Chicago USA

To register go to http://www.gaygameschicago.org