Suggestions for the OTF Seminar

[stephen]

IMHO, the League faces two challenges to the OTF seminar this year.

1) The date should be announced at least a year in advance. Attending this sort of event requires advance planning, reserving your year's vacation time, financial planning and much more for every individual attendant and a few months notice is simply not enough for many people. This was touched on in previous thread.

2) The event should avoid major cities or cities on either coast such as LA, NY or DC. Like it or not, we have a bad economic situation that is becoming worse. The super cities have higher hotel rates, higher rental car rates and higher taxes that drive up prices on all the above.

The tendency is to think "Well, anyone who can afford to travel and take a weekend for this event will not hesitate to spend the few hundred dollars difference." But nothing could be further from the truth. Many people are not traveling at all right now due to economics.

Many more people will strain their budgets desperately to try and find a way to make the trip, and every dollar added reduces their chances of success.

Cities like KC, Dayton, Omaha, Louisville and others are prime candidates because they are in the central part of the country (meaning that more people can drive to the event instead of fly). They also have lower rates on all services, accommodations and travel. And to be honest, they're just more convenient. Dealing with the DC traffic in 07 was simply a nightmare and no one in their right mind wants to hassle with it.

And no, there are no issues with hotel space or convention facilities in a smaller city. For pete's sake, we're talking about less than 150 people here... its not like we need a convention hall for twenty thousand.

I believe we need to be acutely aware that budget is a factor for many potential attendees, and choosing a central location, designated in advance with a date set one year ahead of time, in a mid-sized city with affordable accommodations may have a big impact on seminar attendance, especially in difficult economic times.

It would make a lot of sense to consider those factors.

[dpolglaze]

We're finalizing the date and place this week, but everything points to either the weekend of October 15-18, 2009, in San Antonio, TX.

Dan Polglaze
Membership Secretary