[12935] in APO-L
SUMMER CONFERENCES
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Edward Vehlow)
Thu Oct 12 23:30:48 1995
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:28:53 -0400
Reply-To: Richard Edward Vehlow <vehlor@RPI.EDU>
From: Richard Edward Vehlow <vehlor@RPI.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
First of all, not all hotels have cheaper rates during Christmas week.
On e of the obstacles to Las Vegas bid was that people claimed that it was
cheaper in the summer.
Second, can someone give numbers to me to back up your point.
Third, hotel rooms are generally split four plus ways among the room inhabitants
and are not the weightiest component of total conference cost- airfare is.
You can't split airfare. However, quite often there are fare wars during the
summer months. I realized some deals this way in the past. Do the math-
would you pay 20 to 30 more bucks for a hotel room if you save 100 in airfare.
Think about it.
I've seen conventions of various types anywhere and everywhere at anytime and
everytime. Regardless of any price, APO has always had the best rates of any
other convention I have ever seen. So I wouldn't worry about one buck here or
there. We're getting off easy.
Travel and weather are a potential mess in the winter months. We've had
problems before- why make it difficult? If someone gets killed trying to drive
20 hours through a blizzard, don't come crying to me. Summer travel is much
safer.
Many of my peers and me think that the holiday season should be spent with family,
and some can't make it to the conference because of that reason. So if some
are in the summer and some are in the winter, those that can't go in one
season can make it to the other, and vice versa. Regardless, you're going to
fill the hotel with upwards of 2000 brothers anyway.
Hold a conference and they will come.
And if I want to sightsee, I'd like to do it in ideal weather. The cold snap
and snow in St Louis, and the near freezing rain in Boston made walking
around miserable (and I didn't go to Dallas for work AND holiday reasons).
So the intervals between conference won't be the most uniform anymore- it will
vary by six months in either direction. I'd hardly callit a scheduling
nightmare when it comes to fraternity operations.
All-in-all, I'd say TRY IT. At worst, you'd eventually go back to the old
system after a couple of conferences. At best, it would work perfectly, and I
have confidence in the latter. There were summer conferences 40 years ago
once or twice. For whatever reasons why they went back to winter, back then it
was a different world and different fraternity. It's time to give the system
another look.
IN Leadership, Friendship and service,
REV
