Aaron's Charette DRAWING & INSTRUCTIONS

Hey all, here it is!

Its time to get your ideas out of cyberspace and onto paper! You can do this as a local gathering or immediate family. You can do this alone, if you want or are unable to get together, too.

Preparation:
- Plan your groups - if there's more than 10 people joining in the charette, divide into more than one group. Groups can be organized into older and younger to help everyone get their ideas heard.
- Designate a lead of each group who doesn't mind keeping notes and sketching.
- Print out the drawing as big as you can - BUT KEEP IN MIND, that it still needs to be a size that you can scan back into a computer. This drawing is set up for letter size, but I printed it out at 24"x36" with no problem. I'm planning on photographing it with a high resolution camera to get it into a file.
- Each group needs their own drawing and trace paper or at least (2) copies of the drawing
- Get your markers, pencils, crayons, whatever you want to use.

Charetting:
- The group leader guides the discussion, writing and drawing the ideas onto the trace paper or one of the copies of the master plan drawing.
- Talk about what you want at the Falls, what you think is needed there and what you want to do there. This can include mundane things like roads, wells and utilities, too. Go ahead and jot the ideas down. Sketch what and where you think things go. Sketch your ideas of what a lodge or camping site or whatever should look like up in the margins, too if you want.
- THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: money doesn't matter at this point. This is a pie-in-the-sky discussion. Phasing and funding will be discussed later. If you think we should have lodge built out of solid granite, encrusted with gold and jewels then we'll discuss if that works or how get the money for it later.
- Once your group comes to a consensus of what its master plan should be, use the remaining master plan drawing to draw up a finalized version. This isn't a masterpiece, we just want a completed copy of your ideas without a whole bunch of cross-outs and scribbled out ideas. Go ahead and write down on the drawing the things that you think a picture won't convey very well. Notate your sketches so we know what we're looking at.
- Keep in mind that you probably shouldn't write too small. These drawings will be put looked at online.
- Rate the importance of your ideas. In other words, put a "1" next to the things that you think need to be done right away, "2" next to the next urgent items, and so forth.
- Put your group's name on the drawing somewhere so we know who to praise or blame ;).

Critique:
- Optional: iff there's more than one group at your gathering then maybe you can critique each others before showing it to the whole family.
- We haven't worked out the details of the family-wide critique yet, but here's a start.
- Get your final drawing into a digital format. You can scan it in, or if you have confidence in your skills, photograph it at a high resolution. Since we don't know which file format we want to use yet, for now save it in a lossless format (NOT JPG, it loses quaility everytime you save). We'll let you know the best file formats for uploading when we're at that point.
- Hopefully we'll have a website up soon to upload your plans to.
- Once we get the website up, I think we'll have a deadline for getting your master plans posted by. Once we're at that point, I'll give more directions about critiquing work.

Every Step:
- HAVE FUN!!!

Let me know if you have questions. I'll be at Granddad's this weekend, otherwise you can reach me at ad.macmail@yahoo.com or 360-386-9317.

Aaron