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| Spinosaurus by Mark Verge. This dino won the large sculpture competition at T&S 2010 |
Every year around this time, the question comes up of what to call a large group of balloon twisters and entertainers. I've heard terms ranging from a "horde" to a "bathtub". In the end, we almost always decide the word used doesn't matter as long as the gathering happens. This year, somewhere around 250 people attended Twist & Shout in Chicago, IL.
As with any convention, the reasons to go include an incredible learning opportunity, a friendly and fun atmosphere, a fully stocked jam room with all the balloons (and bodies) you could want, and of course jaw-dropping competitions. That last item always has a surprise or two in it. Those that follow T&S every year know that the Top Twister award goes to the art that receives the most cumulative votes from the small, medium, and large sculpture competitions. Most years, the person to receive that has at least entered all three categories. After all, it helps to pick up votes from each category if a total score is what matters. This year, the winner, Daniel Herron, only entered the small sculpture competition. So to be named the Top Twister, you can only imagine how many votes he received on the one piece. Mark Verge once again won with one of his dinosaur sculptures. A few of us were joking around after and suggested the rules be changed next year so that dinosaurs, motorcycles, and Goofy no longer be allowed in competition.
Don't forget to check out all of the winners.
A change for BHQ this year was in official support of a live jam room web cam. It's not the first time we've seen this. I think the first live convention cam was at Millennium Jam a few years ago. Last year at T&S, Mike Blumenthal put up a camera that ran at least part of the convention. This year, we had two cameras in the jam room. One belonged to Mike and one belong to BHQ. Between us, we had two different types of cameras going (one updating a still frame every couple minutes to get snapshots of the room in various states, and one that had a steady video stream), focusing on different areas of the jam room. Both cameras received a lot of traffic and proved to each be useful in their own way. Phones rang at all hours as people at home wanted to inform their friends in Chicago that they were being watched. I don't recall ever walking into the room when someone wasn't waving in the direction of at least one of the cameras.
Another new item for us was live tweeting throughout the stage competition. I don't know how useful that was. But since we weren't in a position to broadcast the entire show live across the Internet, it made me feel important to keep people up to the minute on the happenings on stage.
I honestly had more fun at this T&S than I have in a few years. I tend to be so busy at conventions, between doing BHQ stuff, teaching classes and handling unexpected tech needs on site that I rarely get to sit and play. This time, I made sure to fit in play time. It was often at the expense of lost sleep. But it was worth it. The only really bad experience I had was my computer deciding to die on me shortly before the banquet/awards ceremony began. As many of you know, it's my laptop that always runs the slide show for the evening. I apologize for a few random oddities that popped up on screen during the night. Since the main portion of the slide show is the winners, I can't prepare this too far in advance. I'm often finishing that moments before walking into the banquet room. Thankfully, I had a USB flash drive on me with the presentation that could be popped into a borrowed machine, but a few last minute slides had to be fixed even later than usual and the slide show of past convention photos had to be drastically reduced in size to fit on a flash drive. Oh well. At least the show went on. Thanks to Todd Neufeld for letting me use his machine during the show.
A number of people have noticed problems with adding YouTube videos to the photo collection lately. There's been a change in the way YouTube works now. When you submit photos, the system always checks to make sure the video ID you enter is a valid YouTube video. Unfortunately, we're often getting a result back from the YouTube server that it's not valid if you only uploaded the video a short time before you submitted it to BHQ. Usually this error goes away if you try again in a few hours. I'm still looking for a better way of handling this. Sorry about the invonvenience.
What can I say? If you follow BHQ regularly, you're aware of the quest to get a grant out of the Pepsi Refresh project for what I hope will become the most seen balloon art project yet. You guys are amazing. I can't believe how many people have taken up this cause for the entire industry. Aside from the huge number of BHQ members that have been helping to spread the word, Pioneer Balloon Company and GlueDots have both jumped in to help us promote this.
For those that haven't seen it, the idea is simple enough. With enough public votes, we can get a $50,000 grant from Pepsi to build Elastic Park, a multi-thousand-square-foot, 100,000-balloon balloon dinosaur exhibit that will ultimately travel from museum to museum around the US (and world?). All it takes is everyone reading this, and the friends and acquaintances of those reading this, to vote for the project every day.
I know it's a little bit of a hassle to vote every day. To see why it's worth it, take a look a the video on ElasticPark.com.
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| Indian Elephant with Princess |
Thelma is an entertainer, face painter, clown and balloon artist based in the United Kingdom.
Visit Thelma Levett's portfolio
