Sample National Show Schedules

   The sample national show schedules will be useful to you if your group is going to host the American Daffodil Society national show. There are six files that you can download. Three of the files are in Microsoft Word format so that you will be able to edit them. Three of the files are the analogous PDF versions of the Word files so that you can see what the files should look like in case your version of Microsoft Word does not display the Word files correctly. (These Word files were prepared with Word 2011 on a Macintosh.) You can pick the form that you like best and edit it to put in the particular times and dates of the show, the photography and artistic design classes, and the acknowledgments of your show committee and other helpful people.

   Form 1 of the sample national show schedule is derived from the file that has been available on the ADS web site for many years. The schedule is laid out in double column format to fit 8.5” x 11” paper. The classes are numbered 1 to 311. Adding or deleting classes in the middle of the schedule means you have to update all the class numbers from that point to the end of the schedule. There are no page numbers because Word thinks your page is 11” wide and 8.5” tall with two columns, but in reality you will be printing it as a booklet with pages that are 5.5” wide and 8.5” tall, i.e., each column as a separate page. This is also what we consider to be the usual, cold climate schedule with plenty of classes for division 3, 4, and 5 and a modest number of classes for division 8 and miniatures. You’ve seen this at many national shows prior to 2010.

   Form 2 of the sample national show schedule has exactly the same classes as Form 1, but they are numbered using a section letter and a number within the section. Consequently, adding or deleting a class only requires renumbering the remaining classes in the section, not the remaining classes in the whole schedule. This schedule is laid out with one page to a sheet of 8.5” x 11” paper. The printed area is about 4.5” wide and 7.5” tall so that it will fit on one page in a booklet. This means the pages can have page numbers. This will be helpful to you as you cut and paste pages to make the masters for printing your show schedule booklet. Also, the layout is particularly nice in that every other row or class has a light gray shading to guide your eyes across the page to the corresponding class number.

   Form 3 of the sample national schedule could be considered the warm climate schedule. You’ve seen it at Murphys in 2010 and Jackson in 2011. It consolidates some of the division 3, 4, and 5 classes but adds more classes for tazettas and miniatures to accommodate the expected number of entries. It is formatted for printing the same way as Form 2, has page numbers, and looks just as nice. An additional feature of Form 3 is that some of the three-stem classes consolidate two or more of the single-stem classifications in order to save bench space where you’re likely to have fewer three-stem entries than in the corresponding single-stem classifications.

   Any of these three forms could be edited into a local show schedule by deleting national classes and awards, but we plan to have a regional sample show schedule soon that could more easily be adapted as a local show schedule.

Sample Regional Show Schedule

  The sample regional show schedule is a starter file for anyone who needs a regional or local daffodil show schedule for an American Daffodil Society approved show. If you already have a document that you update from year to year, you don’t need the sample schedule unless you want to start over with a new layout. Once you customize the sample schedule, you will keep your version for updating from year to year.

   The sample regional show schedule is available in only one form, the one analogous to Form 3 of the sample national show schedule. It has far more classes than any show needs because it combines all the classes you would need for a cold climate show and a warm climate show. A cold climate show (like Forms 1 and 2 of the sample national show schedule) has more classes for divisions 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 while a warm climate show has more classes for division 8 and miniatures. The sample schedule is available as a Word (.doc) file for customizing and as a PDF file so that you can see how it should look in case your version of Word doesn’t display it quite right. The document has extensive comments at the back explaining how to do the editing. There are a couple alternate sections you can swap in so that you don’t have to do a huge amount of editing to consolidate the many classes down to a number suitable for your show. By deleting the Tuggle and Miniature Bronze collections and awards, you will have a local show schedule.

   The sample schedule is divided into numerous sections so that you can easily add sections for local classes. You can add local collection classes to a new section or to the existing standard or miniature collections sections. Classes are numbered with section letter and number (like Forms 2 and 3 of the sample national show schedule) so that you never have to renumber classes beyond the end of a section if you insert or delete classes in a section. All the classes are listed in Word tables, so you will need to understand how tables in Word work. You should be able to customize this document by editing or copying tables and not have to create a table from scratch. Every other row has a 10% gray shading to assist the exhibitor in reading the class description and going across the page to the class number. Some of the three-stem classes consolidate the corresponding singe-stem classes in order to conserve bench space.

   The sample schedule is formatted to print on 8.5” a 11” paper but with margins that allow you to trim it down to 5.5” x 8.5” for photocopying onto letter size paper as a booklet. The pages have page numbers to help you arrange them in the right order as two-page masters for photocopying. The sample schedule has a cover page (that you edit), all the normal horticultural rules, the point scoring scales, ADS awards, and RHS classifications, and placeholders for the photography division, artistic division, and acknowledgments. In other words, it has just about everything you will need if you are creating a new schedule. Obviously, you fill in your own times, dates, local classes, and local awards, but this sample should make it easier for a new show or a person newly charged with preparing a schedule to produce a complete and decent looking schedule.

   The sample regional show schedule is a Word document because Word is a widely available application; however, Word is primarily a word processing application, not a layout application like QuarkExpress and InDesign. Few people have QuarkExpress of InDesign or know how to use them; hence, we’ve done the best we can with Word even though it does not give complete control of layout. Still, you can do fairly well if you learn about Word tables and how to insert and remove page breaks. The comments at the end of the document will help you.