Cancelling an event

I’ve been promoting something to my friends which I’ve been looking forward to for some time now – Graeme’s “Mind the Gap” presentation on Feb 8th at Kyalami. I’ve seen the presentation (about how the different generations behave and think) a few times, but what I’m really looking forward to this time around is the live actors playing each generation. This has huge potential for laughs and insights – which is why I’ve asked my parents to come along too – and almost have enough people to book out a table.

But late this afternoon I received a frantic sms from Graeme – “urgent website change: see email” – and to my disappointment I see that the event has been postponed until “some time in the next few months.” I’ve posted the cancellation notice online and now will have to contact all of the people I convinced to come and say, “Sorry guys…” It’s a little embarrassing, not only for me but also for TomorrowToday.biz. I suppose not as embarrassing as trying to pull together something which is essentially “live theatre” and failing to do so in front of a crowd (I’ve heard the venue holds 500 people). I don’t know who made the decision to can it, but I’m sure it wasn’t easy. Here’s the announcement:

Updated information on “Mind the Gap” theatre event for Thursday, 8 February, Kyalami Theatre on the Track. EVENT POSTPONED.

For the past few weeks we’ve been working on an innovative theatre format for our award winning Mind the Gap presentation. We’ve been doing this conjunction with an events and experiential marketing company, VWV. Unfortunately we’ve hit an obstacle that has forced us to postpone our delivery this Thursday evening. Call it exuberant optimism, but we really wanted to do something that hasn’t been done before, and in the process find ourselves unable to pull it all together. We’re embarrassed that we’ve had to write this, and at such short notice, but that’s because we didn’t want to give you a half-baked product on Thursday night. So, please accept our apologies, but we have to postpone the event on Thursday.

So, instead of delivering something less than what we promised in our invitation (and what attracted you in the first place) we’re asking that you understand as we postpone this event to a later, as yet unknown date, in the first half of this year. We expect it to be within 2 months. This will happen! We’ve come too far and currently have too many people who’ve spent too much time on this to simply walk away.

If you have already booked, we invite you to hold on to your ticket and allow us to wow you once we’ve over-come the obstacle that has hampered our attempt to deliver this week. We will let you have a new date as soon as we’ve re-confirmed venues and delivery dates of our creative teams. At that point you can decide whether you can attend or not – your tickets will be fully transferable or refundable at that point. Of course if you’d like a refund of your entrance fee for this Thursday right away, we fully understand, and will action this immediately. Just send an e-mail, with your banking details, to Jurita Pienaar (jurita at tomorrowtoday.biz), our Bookings Coordinator for this event will send through a confirmation to let you know it’s happened.

Thank you for understanding and our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you. Hopefully you feel some of our creative pain in making such a decision? It’s not been easy to acknowledge we’ve been temporarily beaten and then to have to publicly broadcast that to over 200 people.

If you have any further queries please send an e-mail to Graeme Codrington (graeme at tomorrowtoday.biz).

The TomorrowToday team

We’ve emailed everyone who has booked and offered them a refund – or to keep their tickets until next time.

Nonetheless, that’s going to annoy some people (myself included). The options for us are:

• Stick with the theatre and see “Thoroughly Modern Millie” at the Civic…
• or “The Unexpected Guest” (an Agatha Christie murder mystery) at Montecasino…
• or “An African Journey with Skype” at the UJ Arts Centre
• Stay at home and watch TV…or at least consider going to see “Blood Diamond” (apparently Di Caprio does a good South Effriken accent, compleat with appropriate (?) swear words)
• Vent your frustration in the comments on this post. You’ll feel better – promise!

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