90p Admin

Here is the initial info from the hotel We need to determine some information so I can finalize and negotiate the price. 1) How many attendees 2) How many room to guarantee 3) What is the size of the meeting rooms (1 large or to Medium provided everyone can fit in one 4) do we need a keynote speaker? other guess speakers? We need a have a meeting to discuss. Sooner maybe next week. Thoughts @JeffSchwenk @ThereseLogeais @PeterWolf @RobertWood @WayneSchulz https://www.evernote.com/shard/s79/sh/9b862a36-add2-432a-aa82-7e4f4ea63f4c/ae68a4010508b7037e357c989f2dabd9

Definitely need to meet on this. One immediate thought is whether we can get a rate for the day before and day after. I quickly looked on travel.yahoo.com and it was showing about $210. Almost everyone will want to come in the day before -- hard to say how many will stay extra days. Wild guess on attendance - probably 40 and we can shoot for more but would hate to guarantee above what we attract. Looks like they are looking for 20 rooms? I'm not sure on keynote - I think that would depend on who and what the topic was.

Location certainly is convenient. Looks like we can save 40 - 50 transportation costs by taking the Embassy shuttle instead of a cab/airport shuttle. I agree with Wayne regarding rooms for Thursday night and Sunday night. Would be nice to have this rate even for Wednesday night and Monday night as an option It is February for the northerners. WIFI is included. Looks like an additional 31% is tacked on for tax, gratuity and ""admin"" fees... Attendance, plan low and aim for high. What is the results of the survey for attendance. I think we need to bring that thread back to the top by posting the hotel information and downtown attractions.

Is everyone available today some time?

No problem with getting a matched rate for 3 days prior and 3 days post conference. That is what we did before. I will confirm today and have it added to proposal. I am available all day.

The proposal is supposed to have a 3 nights guarantee. Thursday, Friday.,Saturday with Thursday and Sunday being travel days of most. But we should be able to protect days before and after for those who want to stay come early.

Just sitting at the home office responding to e-mails, tapping into client's system to tweak things and the occasional post to SC and other IM hot spots. At some point today, I do have to get dressed and make the bed or else my wife will think I have been loafing all day.............. Oops, just schedule a 1 PM EST conference call.....

How about a 2 PM CT conference call? @WayneSchulz @PeterWolf @RobertWood ?

Fine by me, even though I wasn't asked.....

What a whiner LOL.

You said you were just loafing around all day, didn't you???

But I may have scheduled something. I work in a dynamic world at the speed of the customer......

I'm good.

That works for me.

I now have a customer call at 2:00 - sorry. Regarding Jim's questions - I'm not sure we need a meeting right this second. We might need to poll the group to get a better picture on a few of these things. 1) How many attendees. We should poll the group and let them know we need this information for planning purposes. 2) How many room to guarantee. Same as above. 3) What is the size of the meeting rooms (1 large or to Medium provided everyone can fit in one). I believe we have agreed to two tracks. It's going to be pretty darn awkward if we have two presenters talking over each other in one meeting room. The size of each room is still open though and is dependent on #1 above. 4) do we need a keynote speaker? other guess speakers? We will have at least 3 vendor sponsors that will be receiving sessions. If you are specifically talking about key notes ... hmmm ... I say we plan out the content like we did last year - create a Google doc and everyone lists what is of interest and then we poll the group. Based on what we come up with, we might not have time for a key note speaker or we might not have the desire for one (if we are packed with other content).

I believe the documents have been posted for this year. As I referenced above earlier, we need to pull those relevant threads back to the top and keep them there on a weekly basis by posting information as we formalize it. We should be able to get a good read on attendance by reviewing the docs...

You all decide.

No meeting then?

We will need to assign tasks

@JimWoodhead - Let us know when you get the revised details for us to review.

I called them this afternoon. Originally I was thinking that we were going to use the $109 but I think we are going to go with the ala carte menu, It will save us $1500 per day) It looks to around $4000 including 22% service a day for 40 people. (Room , Lunch, Drinks, Breaks and AV Gear) We will have 2 rooms (up to 55 capacity each ) Set up in classroom format. I am going to stop by to get some pictures. The Room rate will be $169 Thursday Friday Saturday ( Also 3 days before and after too same rate) Saturday Harbor cruise with diiner is looking promising too. I will get info tomorrow. I will write things up.

With 40 people attending at a preliminary $200/ea (I'm not sure we're totally decided on the fee) that would get us to about break even on the hotel. I'm good with that. I haven't added in any potential sponsors but if none sign up I'm going to make sure they all see plenty of pictures from our private party boat.... ;-D

I am not opposed to going up to $300 for the event fee. Even at that price, considering everything we are trying to put together, it is still reasonably priced.