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Subject:Cost of STC Annual Conferen From:Liz Babcock <Liz_Babcock -at- C28B5 -dot- CHINALAKE -dot- NAVY -dot- MIL> Date:Sun, 22 May 1994 12:25:57 -0800
Mail*Link(r) SMTP Cost of STC Annual Conference
After a hectic eight days in Minneapolis, I'm only just now beginning to catch
up on the TECHWR-L and other e-mail messages awaiting me. Consequently I may be
a bit tardy in my comments about the cost of STC's conference. George Hayhoe
and Chuck Banks already offered excellent explanations and alternatives, but I
do have an additional point I'd like to make.
When Peggy Cathcart, Assistant to the President for Conferences, her staff, and
the STC Office plan for the conferences, they must prepare for a *very* big
party--and the 41st conference was the second biggest STC has ever had. The
last count I heard was 1,976, so I suspect we went over the 2,000 mark. The
only conference ever to surpass that number was in Silicon Valley in 1991 (? I
may be off by a year or so on that date), when about 2,225 avid technical
communicators descended on Santa Clara's conference center. But all of our
conferences in recent years have had to accommodate at least 1,700 people.
The point I want to make is that use of the rooms where the sessions are held
is generally directly linked to rooms booked in the host hotel. To put it in
the starkest terms, if nobody stayed in the host hotel, we wouldn't be able to
use the conference facilities.
I am very much in sympathy with academics, independent contractors, and, yes,
in this era even employees of the government and major corporations who have to
pay the entire cost of the conference themselves. On the other hand, we do need
those rooms in which to hold sessions, so I also hope that the advantages Barb
(BurkBrick -at- AOL -dot- COM) pointed out will continue to attract most of our
conferencegoers to the host hotel. As Barb said:
" . . . to me, the most important part of the conference besides the sessions
was meeting people. In order to do that, I felt it was important to be close to
where the majority of people were staying."
Barb went on to suggest that STC should "have conferences on the outskirts . .
." I think the time may be past when we could realistically do that. Not many
"outskirts" have the appropriate meeting rooms to accommodate a couple of
thousand technical communicators!
One last comment--I agree wholeheartedly with George Hayhoe (who was too modest
to note in his message of the 20th that he is STC's new assistant to the
president for recognition programs, as well as the immediate past secretary of
the Society) that the STC board does want to hear the concerns of members. So
even though we may not always give you the answers you want to hear, please
keep communicating with us.
Liz Babcock
STC President, 1994-95
liz_babcock -at- c28b5 -dot- chinalake -dot- navy -dot- mil
p.s. The host chapter in Minneapolis was warmth and hospitatality personified.
