Dave wrote: > Any idea why they moved it to Southgate? I thought the Seagate center > was pretty nice. > There have been warring parties within the NAMES leadership for a number of years. The only reason they moved to Toledo was that Barbara and Truman Parkinson got in charge of selecting a venue, and I think they sprung the Toledo thing on the rest of the leadership as a done deal, with a several year contract. The Parkinsons live East of Toledo, so it was a great thing for them. The rest of the leadership is from the Detroit area, very hooked in with the auto industry. I also heard (from Barb) that Toledo gave them a deal that was too good to pass up. Anyone who went to the 2006 NAMES knows that Toledo was ABSOLUTELY DEAD that year. It was just eerie to walk out on the streets during the day and there were NO, ZERO people out. I was glad to see this had REALLY changed this last year, there were all sorts of night spots open, etc. A lot of the perks the hotels were giving away in the first years have gone away, too. My guess is part of it was the Seagate was asking for a lot more money for next year.
My first visit to NAMES (2001?) it was in the Yack arena, which was literally a Quonset hut that looked like it was used to store feedbags the rest of the year. They packed 1000+ people into the area of a big basement! It was AWFUL, you could be marooned in a sea of people for 15 minutes until a couple people all moved in the same direction at the same time. Fortunately, that was the LAST year for the Yack. (Well, OK, the Yack Arena is actually big enough to fit a regulation hockey rink, but I guess the extreme crowding just made it seem half that size or even less. The poor lighting also made it seem smaller.) So, they were in the Southgate Civic Center from 2002 through 2006. The first year they only had one rink and the lobby area, later they got both rinks. One big problem is they usually have a hockey game Sunday night, so they have like FOUR HOURS to tear down the entire show so at least one rink can be used. That is an insane mess for the NAMES crew. A lot of people didn't like standing for 8 hours on a sheet of ice, even with a little plywood on top. The warped plywood was pretty bad to roll heavy gear on, also. There is also a dearth of hotels in the Southgate area, including some really BAD ones. Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
