About Festival Society
Organizing the Festival: a floating board, but hardly wooden
Twice a week Jen Loo closes her sponsorship files early, changes into paddling gear, and leaves the Victoria Dragon Boat Festival office with a cheerful wave. But her work isn't finished. Even when she's on the water with her dragon boat team, she's thinking about ways to make the Festival better.
As a paddler and Festival staff member, Loo often makes very specific suggestions about shaping the event to fit paddlers' needs and desires better. And she isn't alone.
A number of the Victoria Dragon Boat Festival Society's staff, key volunteers, and Board Directors are paddlers, and all have used their on-water experience to make the Festival more enjoyable for their paddling peers and competitors.
Willie So, a Director on the Festival Board, began paddling in 1996. He vividly recalls the Festival's earlier years, when he and William Ng, both new members of the Board, paddled on the same team.
"Our comments were very truthful, very real," says So, "and we'd heard it from the horse's mouth. We'd get feedback from out teammates all the time. We had very direct input." Ng, a paddler for eight years, still relies on experience to provide input. He considers himself representative of most Festival participants. "I'm an average paddler, not super-competitive," Ng says. "So I think about what I want to buy at a Festival, and what I want to see when I wander around the site."
MikeFox, the past Site Manager for the Festival, paddles widely with what he calls his "old farts team." But Fox is as cunning as, well, his namesake.
"Being a paddler gives me a chance to see how every other significant festival in BC is run," Fox says. It's research that helps at home. Over the years, Fox has applied his casual reconnaissance to make the Victoria Festival site safer, more comfortable, and more intelligently planned.
Jeff Chow, a Festival Director and past Chair, agrees that paddling the Festival circuit helps the Board plan a better event. "We have a certain perspective because we know what paddlers want," he says. "More toilets. That's what we want," says Jeff, only slightly tongue-in-cheek.
A paddler since 2001, Chow is scrupulous about details and the bigger picture, trying to ensure the Festival hits the right tone of celebratory fun. "I've tried to cut down on the formalities, keep things like the awards ceremony casual," Chow says.
