The 'elephant in the room' in this email thread
is the stark reality that without a sufficient
number of booked hotel rooms, we can't have the
conference facilities we want. That's how
hotel/conference facilities do business. Rich and
John have ably juggled these requirements for
many years--and a lot of other SWLfest
organization details--extremely well, in my
opinion. It's a huge labor of love for them.
The industry term for this business model is
often called "heads in beds": a group of people
must book a certain minimum number of hotel rooms
to subsidize the conference facilities the group wants to use.
Example: If we have 100 people pre-pay their
hotel rooms at the DoubleTree, (I'm guessing on
the actual number this year; it varies) then we
can afford to use the conference facilities we
want. Otherwise, the conference admission fee
would have to increased high enough to cover the
unsubsidized cost of the conference facilities we
want. And if that higher admission fee is more
than a certain number of people are willing to
pay, then we can't have an in-person SWLfest there.
The virtual conference model we used in 2021-2023
(necessarily due to the pandemic) taught us it
brought attendees who otherwise couldn't afford
to come, including some new presenters who made
excellent presentations. So that's why Rich and
John are considering a 'best of both' hybrid
model this year with both in-person and virtual
attendees. Doing that would bring even more
operational and logistical challenges.
Pulling all this off so an in-person SWLFest is
affordable for enough people, and has a full
schedule of interesting presentations, seems more
complicated than a Rubik's Cube!
If anyone's curious, here's the URL for a web
page showing diagrams and specifications of the
DoubleTree Plymouth Meeting conference
facilities. (The Presidential Suite that we've
used for our Hospitality Room since 2014 after I
first suggested it in 2012 is not shown.)
https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/phlghdt-doubletree-suites-philadelphia-west/events/
So if we're looking at alternative venues, this
info could be helpful in determining what might work for us.
-Ed Cummings
At 12:47 PM 1/13/2024, Dennis Dura wrote:
I'll add another 2¢ to what Fred said.
Knowing the Double Tree has had bumps over the
years, and it wasn't their fault there was a Blizzard... it served well.
Plenty of decent eating nearby... Breakfast
accomodated SWL Fest groups forming... You could
chat with folks out in the common areas, and
your room was right upstairs if you wanted a
break. Radio-Hospitality suite too! tpo pay,
I'd say that a place like, if not exactly that
place, would work best for the diverse attendees
we have, that some of the other suggested venues could not offer.
Dennis
PS: Yes we would come down with the WinterFest
crud from time to time post event too... but
that's a function of groups of people together in the Winter.
On Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 16:32 Fred Zalupski
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
My $0.02... I would like to attend live and very
much enjoy the "convention" model. Call me conventional.
I have complete faith in the Festmeisters'
judgement and will be happy with the outcome, even if it's unconventional.
Happy New Year,
Fred
On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 2:40â¯PM John A.
Figliozzi <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
Its not, really. The event hLOGNULL
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as always had a hospitality suite where snacks
and beverages including beer but also several
non-alcohol options including water have been stocked. Thats why it came up.
This is a different challenge this time. In the
pre-covid era covering about 30 years, the event
was held convention-style self-contained in a
hotel where most registrants stayed and included
a banquet the last night. Now that we only had
a virtual event on Zoom for the last 3 years
were trying to gauge interest in having a
hybrid event virtual and in-person and
trying to figure out how extensively if at all
we should follow the convention model.
Cabeesh? :))
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 12, 2024, at 2:30â¯PM, Henry Mensch
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:

Not having attended before, I have to ask why booze is required...
On January 9, 2024 08:32:07 Ron Hunsicker
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
Public schools almost certainly will not allow booze.
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