Cultural Conserves Of The Annual Meeting

[Dale Richard Buchanan]

Dear All,

I have been concerned about some of the postings
regarding the costs of the annual meeting.  I think
before we create a new conserve we should carefully
review where we have been, where we want to go, and
the consequences, anticipated and unintended, of the
new conserve.

We must all take one step back and breathe.  One of
the reasons why I believe that we have such confusion
and dissension about the annual meeting is that we
have not all agreed to the benchmarks that would
signify success for the annual meeting.  Some of the
benchmarks  that I have proposed in the past are the
following:  Net Income (income from the annual meeting
minus all annual meetings expenses), number of total
attenders, and number of first time attenders.  Now,
if we had that information, over time, we could track
whether or not the annual meeting was a success.  We
could also do a graph of these with another item such
as hotel room cost that would give us a better idea of
the correlation of the room expense with the
benchmarks.  I know I could get us a very good deal at
a summer camp in North Dakota, but don't think the
attendance would be very good even if it was very
cheap (smile).   

To my understanding the Miami Annual meeting was one
of the least expensive in many a year.  Airfare into
and from Miami or Ft. Lauderdale are among the lowest
in the country.  I just paid $149 for a roundtrip
airfare from DC to Miami.  AIrfares from the Coast
seldom exceed $300 versus the $440 I just paid for
roundtrip to Seattlle.  The hotel costs in Miami were
among the lowest ever with a cost of just $109.  The
Chairs (Mary Bellofatto, Nancy Kirsener & Sue McMunn)
also made arrangements for room sharing with up to
four persons in a room.
Thanks to the Chairs frugal spending the conference
made a lot of money but the attendance was very low --
about two hundred below San Francisco which was much
more expensive, and about 150 below this year's
conference which was also expensive.

Beware of unintended consequences!  When Zerka was
President, and I was her Vice-President we listened to
the membership nd they wanted a less expensive annual
meeting.  We tried an experiment by going to the
Poconos at a retreat center.  We did everything that
was asked:  leisure time to connect with others, good
inexpensive food in family style dining, inexpensive
lodging, recreational facilities to enjoy, etc.  Well,
in the Poconos we have about 1/4 the attendance of the
New York Conference.   The worst was that while we had
met or exceeded all the above expectations most  said
they would never go to this type of annual meeting
again.  Why, because they were upset that they were
not able to offer a workshop.  Due to space
limitations we only had three or four workshops in
each time slot and we limited, at the suggestion of
the members, the number of sessions per day to so that
people could meet informally.  Thus, this
disgruntlement over not presenting was a large
unintended consequence that was not anticipated.

After this I discovered that usually about 40% of the
meeting attenders are conducting workshops.  When we
limit the number of presenters then a large part of
the membership is unhappy and does not attend.  
Trainers from all over the country bring their
students and want to be recognized for their training
skills and they want their trainees to see their names
on the annual program.  

I don't know the answers to people's concerns about
expenses, but I do know that we must first agree on
what equals success for the annual meeting.  If we met
in a retreat center with 200 attenders when we had 465
in San Francisco and 391 in Brooklyn would the retreat
be a success.  I also think that in many ways the
"expense" of the conference is a scapegoat for many
others concerns that we have for the annual meeting.

I am excited about this discussion and hope that you
realize that no matter what we say or do on grouptalk
it is the leadership of the ASGPP that will make all
final decisions.  

Peace, Dale Richard Buchanan


 


  


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