FW: Congrads John Earl!

["Graap, Ken" <keg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Note to everyone:  Please keep asking, poking, prodding and demanding from
>Me and from COMMON.  We need to know what is important, and what the value
>of COMMON is perceived to be.


I recommend that Common come up with 5 or so hotels in cities like Las
Vegas, Minneapolis, LA, Nashville, Cincinnati, Kansas City to name a few
possibilities... Cities with good conference facilities but more reasonable
hotel / travel costs. Maybe focus on Midwest locations to reduce the "time
zone" affects of travel. 

Then just rotate among these few locations. Hotels might provide better
rates if they know that Common would be returning to their facilities every
couple of years...

Then again ... Do you know what percentage of attendees come to a conference
based on the "Disneyland" type of attractions? Is the draw... what to do
outside the conference or what to do within the conference? 

Personally I go for the "inside stuff". If I want to play, I use my trip to
Common as a jumping off spot to a place I really want to go to and spend the
following weekend there. For example, I went to Indy, enjoyed the conference
and then flew from Indy to Pensacola to visit friends and family, returned
to Indy and flew home the following Monday using the second 1/2 of my ticket
to the conference... Worked great for me!

That's my 2 cents worth....

Kenneth

****************************************
Kenneth E. Graap
IBM Certified Specialist 
AS/400e Professional System Administrator
NW Natural (Gas Services)
keg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Phone: 503-226-4211 x5537
FAX:    603-849-0591
****************************************


-----Original Message-----
From: John Earl [mailto:john.earl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 10:25 AM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: Congrads John Earl!



jte