| LSAF 2010 Planning [message #59505] |
Wed, 24 June 2009 08:29  |
AudioFred
Messages: 377
Registered: May 2009
Location: Houston
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Illuminati (1st Degree) |
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Shane, are you planning to set the dates for LSAF 2010? I suggest we plan it for about the same weekend since that one doesn't seem to conflict with any other audio events. Also, let me know if there's any way I can help.
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| Re: Reports from LSAF '09 [message #59510 is a reply to message #59508] |
Wed, 24 June 2009 10:51  |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18783
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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Agreed about splitting the topic - Done deal.
About Sunday, I sort of agree, sort of not. Pros and cons.
The pros, as I see them, are for long distance travelers, like yourself. You're already making the trip so an extra day of showing makes sense. The trip home cuts into Monday anyway, so why not stay through the whole weekend. Makes sense to me.
The cons, as I see them, are mostly for the locals. Most of the people that have less than a days drive like to tear down on Sunday and start the drive back. That way they are able to get home and unloaded by Sunday night, ready to start the work week Monday morning. Most have taken off Thursday and Friday already, so this lets 'em open up shop on Monday.
I tend to fall into the latter camp. I would prefer to get back by Sunday afternoon, ready to work Monday morning. But I do see the attraction of keeping the show going on Sunday, and I also realize that the best days of public showing are weekend when the local attendees are usually off work and able to show up at something like this.
Another problem for Sundays is this: If we post a schedule that says we're going to have the show running through Sunday, but then 80% of the exhibitors leave, we may leave some attendees very disappointed. That happened a couple years, we scheduled the show to run through Sunday so some people thought they could come out on Sunday afternoon and see something. But by the time they arrived, most had left. There were still a few rooms open, but not many. That's why we started posting a schedule that said "Sundays optional". It was largely driven by the reality of what was happening.
My suggestion is if we find a core group of exhibitors willing to commit to staying through Sunday, we'll post that in the schedule. We'll basically re-open Sunday. I don't think we should try to force exhibitors to stay, although I suppose that's an option. We could make it a condition for showing. I don't think that's the best way to do it though - I think we should just put it out there and see if we can find enough exhibitors willing to stay through Sunday.
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| Re: LSAF 2010 Planning [message #59514 is a reply to message #59505] |
Wed, 24 June 2009 17:24 |
Shane
Messages: 1117
Registered: May 2009
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Illuminati (3rd Degree) |
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| AudioFred wrote on Wed, 24 June 2009 08:29 | Shane, are you planning to set the dates for LSAF 2010? I suggest we plan it for about the same weekend since that one doesn't seem to conflict with any other audio events. Also, let me know if there's any way I can help.
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That's something that we need to decide. I'm going to be sending out emails to all who exhibited this year to hopefully get some feedback on what we could do different, including dates. I'd like to go ahead and set up something with the hotel we were at by the end of the summer.
Any suggestions for questions will be appreciated.
Any volunteer help would be even more appreciated.
I'm thinking:
What dates, promotions, raffles, adverts, talks, steering committee help, etc......
I'd really like to see about 30 rooms showing. Not so many you can't get a decent listen in each room over two days, but not so few as to make it not worth coming to for the exhibitors.
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| Re: Reports from LSAF '09 [message #59541 is a reply to message #59540] |
Fri, 26 June 2009 23:07 |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18783
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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I always show up Thursday night and am ready to go first thing Friday morning. So I'm good with that. Staying open later Friday night is also cool with me, I usually have my door open Friday evening as long as I can. But Sunday is the harder one to please everyone on, I think.
It's a great idea to have everyone stay open Sunday, as that's a weekend day that most visitors will find convenient. But like I said, the problem is you can't really force exhibitors to stay through Sunday. Then the problem is that if rooms start to close and we've told the public that the show is running all day Sunday, people may be disappointed to find a room they hoped to see has packed up and left. How do we handle that?
The first two years, I personally stayed all day Sunday. Most other rooms didn't. I thought it made the most sense to be open Saturday and Sunday, since that's when most walk-ins will show up. But most other rooms left, I think probably for the reasons I mentioned earlier, Sunday was a travel day for them.
At those first couple shows, there were some people that traveled long distances to come just on Sunday, and they only got to see people loading out. They naturally asked why we had a published schedule showing open Sunday, when really we weren't open that day. I didn't have a good explanation for them except that we planned to stay open, it's just that some rooms couldn't. Trouble was, "some" was actually "most".
I think if we get consensus from everyone that we stay open Sunday, we can put it in the schedule. But the way this show is done, with no real obligations to anyone, I'm not sure how successful we'll be at that. My experience has been you can't even know who will be here at all until the last few days before the show. That makes it hard to honestly commit to Sunday. We have to publish a schedule that the public can count on months in advance, yet we don't know a real count of rooms until days before the show. How do we handle that?
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), a full day Saturday, a full day Sunday, then pack up Monday morning.
