RAW
Guidelines (aka "the fine print") (Updated 6/19/2014)
History of RAW: The Regional Aquatics Workshop held its first official meeting
in 1989. The name was designed to provide lots of elbow room
for future development. The meanings intended for each title
word by the founding attendees evoke the sentiments that led to
RAW and help us understand and preserve its unique character:
“Regional”
Intentionally vague enough to
include a future region of any size. (Originally encompassing
the Great Lakes/Midwest region, attendees now come from all over
North America,
Europe, etc.)
“Aquatics”
The group is not limited to
those interested in fishes, or to those working at traditional
public aquariums. Over the years “Aquatics” has been
occasionally garbled to “Aquarium” or “Aquatic”.
“Workshop”
An intentional attempt to avoid
the creation of (or reference to) a traditional governing body
that would evolve unnecessary hierarchical structures. Read
“Workshop” as “public aquarium professionals of all levels
learning from one another”.
From 1989 to 2000 RAW meetings
were organized by the host institution with informal help from
previous hosts and other interested RAW enthusiasts. Attendance
has grown from 10 to over 200. The sheer size of the meetings,
increasingly complicated logistics, and associated communication
issues prompted previous organizers to establish a RAW Advisory
Committee in 2001.
RAW is not part of any other organization. However its
attendees are members of other organizations (AZA, EUAC, etc.)
that have found it productive to conduct some of their business
in conjunction with RAW meetings [the day before RAW has become
the working meeting venue of choice for many AZA conservation
committees including the Coral Reef CAP, the Fish and Aquatic
Invertebrate TAGs, and the Lake Victoria SSP].
The Advisory Committee:
The RAW Advisory Committee (RAWAC)
was created to act as a resource for future RAW hosts, and to
help bring issues affecting RAW to the attention of the
attendees. RAWAC is not a governing body and any policies or
actions suggested by this committee are subject to approval by
the current host and the attendees of each meeting (as
applicable).
As of its formation in January
2001, RAWAC is composed of ~25 individuals who have previously
hosted RAW meetings, or were co-founders. Jeff Gibula (jgibula@newportaquarium.com)
is the current chair, effective June 2013.
It is not required that the individual
remain at the original facility that hosted RAW, but s/he should
ideally still be active in the husbandry or conservation
departments of a public aquarium.
A
chairperson elected by this committee serves as a conduit for
information to future hosts and to the attendees (past and
potential). Official activities of the committee begin
immediately following the annual meeting. The chairperson
serves a two year term (elections immediately after RAW in
even-numbered years). Committee members may serve for an
unlimited period. As deemed periodically necessary by the RAWAC
due to committee growth, an election may be held to decrease the
committee size by one member (effectively temporarily freezes
committee size since the new host is also added). N members
each cast a vote for N minus 1 seats. The committee member with
the least number of votes rotates off the committee. Should the
current chairperson receive the least number of votes, a new
chairperson must be elected. As another means of managing
committee size and structure, the RAWAC Chair may periodically
ask the committee if any members wish to voluntarily withdraw
because they feel they are unable to actively participate. In
addition, members who are both: no longer employed in
husbandry or conservation departments, and who have
stopped participating in meetings or email conversations, may be
dropped from the committee roster.
The Chairperson may appoint individuals to act as temporary
secretaries for individual meetings, subcommittee chairs, etc.
Two standing subcommittees have
been established within the RAWAC: the Sponsorship Committee
(2003), and the Program Committee (2004). The former is
currently inactive because host to host communication has been
satisfactory. Subcommittee members are not required to be
chosen from the RAWAC group.
Host facilities remain the primary organizers of each RAW, but
are requested to consider the opinions of these
committees when planning meetings. Hosts are required to
follow the RAW Policies listed below. Chairs of these standing
committees must maintain contact with RAWAC (through the RAWAC
chair) and the hosts.
Program Committee:
Brian Dorn is the current chair of the
Program Committee. This committee is
charged with helping the hosts develop a program for each
meeting, and will help solicit speakers. A Complete list
of current members is included below.
Website
Paul Clarkson (pclarkson@mbayaq.org).
RAW Advisory
Committee Roster as of September 2013
RAW
Program Committee Roster
RAW Policies:
Every attempt is made to keep
the organizational structure of RAW minimized, but a few rules
have been found to be helpful.
1) Site selection for RAW:
a) Future hosts are voted on at the annual meeting.
b) Voting is for the meeting to be held two years after the
current meeting (we voted for the 2004 meeting during the 2002
RAW).
c)
Voting Protocols:
i) Votes
are by a show of hands and must be tallied.
ii) If only two institutions are requesting to host, and
there is a tie, a coin flip will decide the vote.
iii)
If only one institution announces its candidacy at the business
meeting, that institution will win the vote by default.
iv) If
a tie occurs between some of the requestors, a run off vote will
immediately be conducted to determine the winner.
v) Even if the tie is for runner-up, a run off will be held
to determine “rights of succession” in the event that the
primary host needs to withdraw for some reason.
vi) If
the winning requestor withdraws before the meeting occurs, the
runner-up is given first right-of-refusal to be the new host.
vii) Should a withdrawal occur with insufficient time left to plan a
RAW, the meeting will be postponed or will skip a year.
viii) Defaulting host individuals are automatically removed
from the Advisory Committee and replaced with the new host.
ix) If
no institutions put forward their candidacies (which must be
confirmed by their institutions) by the start of the business
meeting, a written vote will occur by email. The electorate for
this vote will be the attendee list supplied to the RAWAC by the
host (giving all who could potentially have attended the
business meeting an opportunity to vote again).
2) Hosts should plan for a RAW business meeting to occur near
the end of the conference (not at the very end of the last
day as attendance will be poor, and not at the beginning of any
day for the same reason). This is when voting for future
RAW sites and other RAW discussions and votes will occur.
3) Husbandry-related issues should be the focus of each RAW
conference, but the choice of talks is not limited to that
topic. RAW fills a unique niche for husbandry information now
that other organizations such as AZA, IAC, and EUAC have moved
away from this topic.
4) In
order for each attendee to maximize their exposure to presented
material, scheduling of concurrent sessions is to be avoided.
5) Keep costs to attendees minimal: Registration should be
free when possible and must never exceed $75 (1/08).
Sponsorships and internal funding should be used to support the
conference to whatever extent is possible. Keep the lodging
costs down (for those aquarists attending only RAW, not any
supplemental meetings) by placing non-RAW meetings at either end
of the meeting schedule, so those attendees not involved in
non-RAW activities (AZA TAG meetings, extra ‘symposia’, and
extensive tours or side trips) can make the best use of time and
expense money. Potential hosts located at cheap airfare
destinations will be appreciated by attendees who are paying
their own way.
6) RAW
paper sessions should not exceed 2½ days. This does not include
any special meetings that may be tacked on either end of the
conference for the convenience of some attendees. Please do not
intersperse the session days with “special event days”.
7)
Host
as your means allow. As the meetings have increased in size, so
has the level of effort put into ice breakers, dinners, etc. Do
not feel obligated to equal or top previous efforts. Picnics
are as good as banquets. Remember that originally, RAW evening
events featured a cooler of beer in someone’s hotel room.
8) When offering to serve as a host for a future RAW, each
candidate should present tentative dates for their RAW, a brief
summary of hotel costs, and airline ticket prices from a few key
cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami). The purpose
of this is to give future attendees a way to compare the costs
of attending a meeting at each location prior to the vote.
9) Hosts must collect abstracts for each paper and poster
presented. These should include title, presenters, affiliation,
and email address. Text should be limited to a couple of
paragraphs. Hosts must submit the abstracts to Drum and
Croaker by Dec 15th of the conference year, in
the format used in previous issues of D&C (see Pete Mohan for
more information and a copy of the original Word document
containing formatting cues.
10) Email lists of attendees of a particular RAW (specific year)
will be made available to attendees from that year’s
conference. A larger, comprehensive mailing list (or annual
lists) will be kept using contact information for all previous
attendees for at least 5 years. This master list will not be
distributed to attendees (because it could be misused by
vendors), and will be updated each year by the next host.
11) The search for sponsors should begin soon after volunteering to
host a RAW Conference (two years in advance). It has become
obvious that sponsors plan their own schedules and budgets over
a year in advance and opportunities for sponsorships may be
missed if host wait until the year before the conference to
begin seeking sponsors.
12) Vendors are allowed to give presentations, as long as they
contribute to the field and are not simply opportunities for
advertising. It is up to each host to determine the
appropriateness of such talks.
Previous RAWs:
RAW# |
Date(s) |
Location(s)
Host(s) |
Milestones |
0 |
7/22/89 |
Columbus
Zoo
John Culbertson & Doug
Warmolts |
Casual chat arranged by
John, a vendor and aquarium fan, leads 4 attendees to
support what would soon become RAW #1
|
1 |
11/3/89 |
Toledo
Zoo
Jay Hemdal |
Single day. Name
coined and guiding principles developed. Jay invites
all aquariums within half-day drive. 20 attendees. |
2 |
3/9?/90 |
Fort Wayne Children’s
Zoo
Warren Pryor |
Last meeting fit in a
single-day or held around a conference table. 29
attendees? |
3 |
10/26-27/90 |
St. Louis
Zoo
Joe Norton |
First auditorium and
formal program for talks. 19 attendees. |
4 |
4/25-26/91 |
Milwaukee
County
Zoo
Rich Sajdak &
Craig Berg |
Group brainstormed on
planned exhibit renovations at zoo. |
5 |
10/4-6/91 |
Ohio
DNR Hatchery. Put-In-Bay,
South
Bass
Island,
Lake Erie,
Ohio
Doug Warmolts & Dave
Ross,
Ohio Division of Wildlife |
A small RAW group
helped ODNR develop plans to convert the hatchery to an
aquarium. Gales kept a drunken sailing regatta in port.
|
6 |
6/12-13/92 |
Sea World of Ohio &
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
Pete Mohan & Dan Moreno
|
Last semi-annual RAW.
Tours of Rainforest (Zoo) and Shark Encounter (SWO),
both under construction. Vote of support from attendees
for Pete to relaunch Drum and Croaker. Last ice-breaker
held in someone’s motel room. 21 attendees
|
7 |
6/16-17/1993 |
Tennessee
Aquarium
Chris Coco |
First RAW at a large
stand-alone aquarium. Attendance jumps to 35-40 as
East-Coast and Southern facilities attend for first
time. |
8 |
7/29-30/94 |
John G. Shedd Aquarium
Roger Klocek &
Mike Mulligan |
41 folks
from 17 facilities, including the first "overseas"
attendee, an aquarist from Bermuda Aquarium. There were
12 scheduled talks including ones on poison arrow frogs,
paddlefish, and Partula snails. |
9 |
7/21-23/95 |
National Aquarium in
Baltimore
Perry Hampton, Bruce
Hecker, & Chris Andrews |
First East-Coast
meeting. Discussion groups on LSS and Conservation. AZA
TAG meetings are first held in conjunction with RAW. 55
attendees. |
unofficial |
3/15/96 |
ReRAW at Frisch's Big
Boy, in
Findlay,
Ohio
Warren Pryor |
5 or 6 aquariums drove
to a central point for a long lunch to attempt to
recreate the original semi-annual RAW tradition. The
joke: Form a new organization called LUNCH (Landlocked
Underwater Naturalists and Curators Hanse).
|
10 |
6/6-8/96 |
New England
Aquarium
Steve Bailey |
RAW hosted a paper
session and TAG meetings for AZA conservation
efforts…and confusion of RAW with AZA begins. 72
attendees from 26 institutions (4 overseas).
|
11 |
6/11-13/97 |
Omaha’s Henry Doorly
Zoo
Kathy Vires |
Concurrent workshops
held on several subjects. |
12 |
4/8-10/98 |
Texas
State
Aquarium
Charles Smith & Tom
Schmidt |
Many attended a
3-day pre-RAW tour of Texas Aquariums. Bad judgment in
San Antonio results in
‘discovery’ of what would become “The Chalice”. |
13 |
5/13-15/99 |
Underwater World, Mall
of America
Craig Atkins &
Jeff Krenner |
Chalice first awarded
to aquarium professional with most challenging year. |
14 |
5/24-27/00 |
Aquarium of the
Americas
Rich Toth & Toni Davi |
Last free RAW as
attendance and costs skyrocket. AZA TAGs fixed as a
pre-RAW event, instead of mixed with RAW sessions. 120
attendees. |
15 |
6/3-7/01 |
Atlantis Resorts
Michelle Liu-Ferguson &
Steve Kaiser |
Modest registration fee
of $25. Advisory Committee formed to deal with
administrative issues on an “as-needed” basis. 163
attendees. |
16 |
3/24-27/02 |
Colorado’s Ocean
Journey
Rich Lerner |
RAW meets as the
closing of the facility seems imminent. RAW in the
Rockies…almost to the continental divide.
138 attendees |
17 |
6/5-8/03 |
Riverbanks Zoo and
Aquarium
Melissa Salmon |
Sea Turtle Symposium
held in conjunction with RAW. First “Aquarist
Olympics”. 198 attendees. |
18 |
5/18-23/04 |
Mote Marine Laboratory
Aquarium
Kevin Curlee |
A series of talks and
workshops were directed at improving communication among
and within aquariums, and identified priority issues on
many topics for further action by RAW attendees. ~170
attendees. |
19 |
6/20-24/05 |
Aquarium of the Pacific &
Cabrillo Marine Aquarium
Perry Hampton & Jeff
Landesman |
RAW finally crosses the
continental divide and touches the Pacific. 200 attendees! |
20 |
5/14-19/06 (Sea Turtle
Symposium on 5/20-21) |
Aquarium at
Moody
Gardens
Greg Whittaker |
Cephalopods, sea turtles and more with a combined attendance of about 225. A unique use was
found for a ton of expired frozen capelin. |
21 |
6/18-21/07 |
Pittsburgh
Zoo and PPG Aquarium
Alan Marshall |
Back to the Homeland
of RAW (Great Lakes and
Ohio
Valley). A cruise.
Unfortunately, a pond was included at the Olympic site. |
22 |
6/16-19/08 |
Atlantis Marine World
Joe Yaiullo |
The second Atlantis
to host a RAW, but this time the one on
Long Island! 200 attendees. |
23 |
6/8-6/13/09 |
Newport
Aquarium
Jeff Gibula |
Newport,
Kentucky
brings RAW back to its roots....kind of. It's right
across the river from
Cincinnati,
Ohio. |
24 |
6/7-6/11/10 |
Henry Doorly Zoo
Mitch Carl |
The Oracle of Omaha,
Mitch Carl, predicted we would all attend RAW in 2010.
And there was a SECORE workshop. 185 attendees. |
25 |
5/2-5/6
2011 |
Virginia Aquarium
Beth Firchau |
RAW heads to
Virginia Beach! Sea Turtle Symposium enjoyed by all. 269 attendees. |
26 |
4/9-4/13
2012 |
John G. Shedd Aquarium
Mark Schick |
Back to the Windy City
after 18 years! 290 attendees. |
27 |
4/22-4/26
2013 |
Georgia Aquarium
Chris Coco |
Time for some Southern
hospitality!
340 attendees. |
28 |
4/21-4/25
2014 |
North Carolina Aquarium
Hap
Fatzinger |
East Coast! |
29 |
2/2-2/6
2015 |
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Paul
Clarkson |
West Coast! |
30 |
2015 |
Audubon Aquarium of the
Americas |
Mardi Raw! |
|