jallman said:
Plus we want to give everyone time to plan and save for travel arrangements...and then time still to make their arrangements in advance to get the best fares. I know I like to buy all my travel tickets at least 3 months in advance.
Bingo. I did some searching around today, just playing with a few possibilities, and if I booked something now, as an example, it'd cost me a little over $200 to fly into D.C. A flight from California to D.C. in the same time frame yielded slightly higher airfares, but that's to be expected. Of course, if we stuck with the East Coast thing, I could also cut my expenses by driving. Money's tight for us right now, so the cheaper, the better - and I imagine that's true for a good portion of our members (broke college students come to mind :mrgreen: ) Of course, the more members we can get committed to coming, the cheaper it'll be for all involved as far as the registration fees and such.
Oh, and Mixey, Columbus Day weekend is October 7-9 (Saturday through Monday). Of course, if folks were to have a long weekend (federal workers would for sure), they'd still have to take a vacation day for Friday if we went that route, but it'd also give them Monday as a freebie day to be home and unwind from the trip, so looking at it that way, it makes the most sense in my mind.
As far as timing of events, we could perhaps have an introductory dinner sort of thing Friday night; that could be a simple affair, perhaps even just pick up some party subs and such from a Subway or Quiznos, maybe even just order a bunch of pizzas. Something very fun and relaxed just to initially break the ice. Saturday morning we could maybe meet after breakfast, do a live debate sort of thing, break for the afternoon for some tours or for members to do their own sightseeing, and meet again for dinner, something a bit more elaborate this time, and do maybe the roast idea with live entertainment provided afterwards by our members. As far as tech support for that sort of thing, most hotels have a lot of that stuff wired into their conference rooms permanently, and it's not hard at all to set up.....I have experience with all of the required equipment, as would at least a few of our musically inclined members. If the hotel didn't have the stuff permanently set up, I'm sure the use of it (assuming they own the equipment) could be worked into the rental fee; otherwise, checking out an outside rental might not be a bad option.
Anyway, getting back on track.....we could have the dinner early enough so that folks would have some time to get in some nighttime sightseeing before hitting the hay, and we could reconvene Sunday morning for a breakfast, maybe do a little awards thing, and break it up early enough so that those with earlier flights home would have time to catch those flights, and the others could squeeze in some more sightseeing before they too had to leave.