Sage News and Discussion

Many of you may have already read about the water issues in the Washington DC National Harbor area. Jeff and others have posted about it within the message thread regarding Minds of The Future (which has had to change locations). In a nutshell the entire National Harbor area (which is really like a mini resort town) will have the water shut down Tuesday so that crews can work on replacing a failing portion of a water line. The Gaylord emailed me last night at 7:30pm to cancel our Saturday reservation for the 90 Minds suite. I emailed Sage to ask if they had any additional information and their reply was that they did not expect any interruption to Saturday or Sunday activities and that water will/should be back on by that time. It's hard to say whether the hotel is being overly cautious and cancelling reservations just in case repairs run long. In any event - in case you missed it that's what we know so far. Hopefully this will all be fixed quickly. There's a ton of money being lost in this area so I have to believe repairs will be happening 24 x 7 at a very high priority. Attached is the notice that those who are arriving early (presumably Friday or earlier) received.

As of now - even though hotels are cancelling weekend reservations for those who booked directly - it appears that Sage is planning on NO IMPACT for those arriving on Saturday or later. This seems to only be an issue for early arrivals.

Update from Sage - looks like they are expecting no interruption for those arriving Saturday or later: The hotel has moved attendees arriving early to another hotel and are notifying them via email and a phone call. We had a call with the hotel yesterday, and the Water division confirmed work would be completed by Saturday, thus allowing the Gaylord to re-open Saturday to hotel guests.

From Danielle Cote , Sage - via LinkedIn Sage Partners Group: Sage Summit and Water Repair Project in Prince George's County. Here are the facts.... As we prepare for our departure to Sage Summit, there is news coming from Prince George's County about the water repair project that is underway and the impact it is having on residents, businesses, and hotels. National Harbor is in Prince George's county so the buzz, rumor and speculation was nonstop. I would like to share the facts and what is known as of today. 1) Sage Summit will go on! The water repair project is not affecting our work schedule. It is merely an inconvenience. The Gaylord National will be providing facilities, bottled water and will have ability to offer cold food (sandwhiches). That said, the event team and our vendors will be continuing to work to deliver Sage Summit as expected and as scheduled. 2) There are hotel rooms for early-arrivers. Outside of the event team and our suppliers, there were a handful of customers (6), partners (40) and exhibitor staff (20) that had planned to arrive some time over the dates of Wed., 7/18 through Friday, 7/19. Allternative arrangements are being made to house these guests elswhere and will be returned to the Gaylord via courtesy shuttle on Saturday, 7/20. 3) Some hotel cancellation notices said Sunday, 7/22, was earliest return. And here is the lesson for us all. If you booked your hotel room through SAGE SUMMIT during registration, your room is protected for a Saturday arrival. If you booked on own, you are considered a ""transient"" reservation and are not afforded the same protection that SAGE SUMMIT attendees get. The hotel's priority and contractual obligation is with Sage. The hotel is not contratually obligated to support transient reservations and will support them as their capacity allows. In speaking to the Gaylord National, they have committed to allowing transients to return on Sunday. 4) Sage event team is monitoring developments daily. I am sure you would expect us to be very involved in developments -- and we are! We are being updated several times a day. We are aware of media reports and there is a tendency for them to over report on the story. What we do know is there is immense presure on the water company to meet their timetable for repair which is what we are basing our plans on. Besides Sage Summit, there are residents and local businesses that are also impacted. Despite this curve ball, we are proceeding with Sage Summit and will also have contingencies should the repair schedule be adjusted. 5) Take a deep breath! Certainly this is an inconvenience but we will carry on. We are very fortunate that the bulk of those impacted by alternate hotel stays are Sage employees and our event suppliers. Less than 5% of our attendees will experience any inconvenience -- unless they booked a hotel outside our Sage Smmit block. We will conitnue to provide updates if necessary.

@WayneSchulz thanks for the heads up and keeping everyone up-to-date. We all owe you a collective free drink on Sage for saving us the time necessary to stay updated with the Gaylord individually.

This is a live blog that should capture more updated information about the water outage. Until the dig up the pipe and remove it I'm sure they won't know for sure how long the outage will last. And as Mark Chinsky noted - I'd be avoiding the tap water for a good while. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/liveblog/wp/2013/07/17/prince-georges-emergency-water-shut-off-wednesday-updates/?hpid=z2

Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/WSSCWaterNews

The county's chief engineer: it could be a couple three days...I don't rightly know.

Look for a new update from Sage indicating that arrangements have been made for water to the Gaylord and that the only reservations impacted will be tonight. No word about the other nearby hotels, but it appears disaster has been averted at the Gaylord and that Summit will go on pretty much as planned.

Subject: It's a MIRACLE!!! Team, We just had an update from Gaylord National with news from the Water company. They have put some sort of valve in place that will allow water to run to Gaylord National. The only reservations impacted will be early arrivers for tonight. All reservations beginning tomorrow (July 18) under the Sage Summit room block will be honored. The hotel will be open for business. We do not know the status of satellite hotels but are in the process of understanding if they will have water provisions as well. We will work to get the word out quickly through all means possible. We are working on this as fast as possible. WOOHOOOOOO!!!

Catastrophe averted..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/prince-georges-copes-with-water-restrictions/2013/07/17/12c44bcc-eed4-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html

I would not trade days with Danielle today.