Definitely looking forward to meeting a wider variety of pipers; I'm relatively new to pipes (though have been interested in for 14 years), and about the only non-GHB/uilleann piper I've known in person was a Balkan piper up in Seattle, and some gaiteros I met in Spain.
I'll be at Shepherdstown, and hard to miss since I don't think there'll be many short boyish guys with shaggy hair and a nose piercing, and I think there might be only one other sackpipa piper. I also might go to a piping conference/course on Swedish sackpipa in Minnesota in March, so pushing right along on this. After I meet a few more folks at Shepherdstown, I do have a few possibly good ideas on some ways to bring more attention to the NSP online; I've got a pretty good background in forum and blog issues, and promotions. But I can run the ideas by folks at the Potomac event first. Looking forward to seeing folks, and exposing more people to the Swedish pipes as well; kind of the polar opposite of the NSP, having no keys (or one key on mine), one drone, single-reeded chanter, etc. Though it does share some of your chromaticity (if not range). Modern sackpipa fit 11 notes into the octave, so not bad for a primitive pipe. See some of you then, -Matthew -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
