same way. I asked her, what if we had a space where Pelicans and proteges could come together where we could really start discussing some of the things that weren't necessarily about the service we were doing, but rather how service was being performed and affected by outside elements within the SCA. 

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The first meetup occurred at Pennsic in 2016. It was the first time we were doing it and the thought was that we would get a few people who might want to sit down and talk about service itself. Not necessarily the type of service we were doing but about performing it. We had about 50 people show up. We went around the room and asked everyone to tell us who they were and to let us know at least one concern they had about preforming service within the SCA. At the top of the list (Which spanned 2 pages) were Burnout, a space to showcase our work the way squires and apprentices get to present their skills, long distance Pelican-protege relationships, and what is needed or expected of a protege for them to become a Pelican. There were so many other that were mentioned but these were the ones that had the majority of response. We had only planned an hour so by the time we got through the introductions we realized that we only had about 15-20 minutes to discuss the topics. I think having a chance to say what our concerns were was a huge start to what has become a successful experience. 

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Since Burnout was at the top of the list, we started with that and we went around allowing everyone to say how they felt about it, but since there were so many people, we didn't have much time for a discussion. Maestra Giovanna and I sat down to discuss this afterwards and realized that this was a larger opportunity than we had originally realized. Service is done within the SCA but sometimes, it is only noticed or recognized by very few as most of what we do do tends to be behind the scenes.