Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!nosc!crash!simpact!jeh From: jeh@dcs.simpact.com Newsgroups: comp.org.decus Subject: Re: Location and dates of May decus Message-ID: <1657.27047d00@dcs.simpact.com> Date: 29 Sep 90 17:52:48 GMT References: <1642.27009373@dcs.simpact.com> <15489@shlump.nac.dec.com> <1631.26fabe84@dcs.simpact.com> <659@slammer.UUCP> <1990Sep26.213529@tgv.com> <3522.2701d205@fps.mcw.edu> <1990Sep28.152920.3299@bony1.uucp> Organization: Simpact Associates, San Diego CA Lines: 106 In article <1990Sep28.152920.3299@bony1.uucp>, billg@bony1.uucp (Bill W. Gripp) writes: > Why is the Spring DECUS always in the South (it seems to be usually > Atlanta and occasionally New Orleans)? Let's see. This is from memory, I think that the set of cities is correct but I may have a few of the years jumbled: 84 Cincinnati 85 New Orleans 86 Dallas 87 Nashville 88 Cincinnati 89 Atlanta 90 New Orleans 91 Atlanta 92 Atlanta 93 Atlanta 94 New Orleans I guess you could say that it's usually been in the south in the last few years. (Note, a few of these dates may be mixed up. It's hard to remember that far back. Let's see, where were LAVCs announced again? :-) > If it has to be in the south > there are other options. What's wrong with ORLANDO, they have > conventions there and DISNEY WORLD too =:^). A future Spring DECUS is pencilled in for Orlando, but it's far enough in the future that I don't want to mention dates. I expect that it would have been done sooner except for lack of facilities -- see below. > How about Nashville or Dallas It's been done; see above. Nashville, by the way, was not well-liked. Meeting facilities were barely adequate, and anyone who had to stay elsewhere than at the HQ hotel was WAY off in the boonies. > Then there's always New York impossibly high room rates. > Boston Same comment as for Orlando, above. Until the completion of their new convention facilities, Boston won't/didn't have room for us. > or Cleveland =:^). > Toronto or Montreal would be nice. I know, > let's make it in Halifax so we can all get some really good LOX =:^}. Um, this is the U.S. DECUS Symposium we're talking about. The Canadian DECUS Chapter has its own national symposia, which you are free to attend. > Then there's the fall (winter?) DECUS. Hey I like Anaheim (DISNEY LAND > is great) but howabout San Diego, Seattle (nice town), Vancover BC, > Denver or Salt Lake City once in a while? Or SFO. We were there in '86 and will be returning soon. In all these cases the answer is lack of available facilities -- in some cases lack of facilities, period. We're pencilled in to return to San Diego (now that the new convention center is open) in the future. You'll hate the room rates, though; this is a tourist town and the hotels don't need to give much of an edge to convention-goers. > All this talk about ATLANTA as the only suitable site is really bogus. No, it isn't. Although DECUS is only a medium-sized meeting in terms of numbers of attendees (the winter Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas draws many tens of thousands; as I was leaving Chicago one time I was told that the city was expecting over 100,000 for a farm machinery trade show), its facilities requirements are pretty unusual. We need one very large meeting room, several large meeting rooms, plus other meeting rooms of various sizes, for about 15 program tracks total, PLUS small meeting rooms for BOF meetings and the like, plus space for the campgrounds, the Update.Daily room, the rooms needed by the audio taping people, etc. *And* we need space for the DEC exhibit hall. *And* we need space to feed lunch to five to ten thousand people every day. And we need all of it relatively close together, with hotel rooms within walking distance or at least a short bus ride away. Now, many convention facilities can provide some subset of this, but not all of it all at once... and of those few that can, you can look a long, LONG way into the future without finding a solid week in which all of it is un-booked. (Oh, and the exhibit hall setup begins in the preceding week, so we need that space for a week and a half.) No one has mentioned Atlanta's good points: We had more than enough room, and it was all under one roof (a damned BIG roof; a slidewalk between the two wings of the convention center would've come in handy!). DEXPO was close at hand, not miles away. And the city offered some really good eating. Disclaimer: I'm not on the Symposium Committee and don't speak for them. I do, however, have some amount of experience putting much smaller conventions into hotels, and when they tell me that "we have no choice at this time but to go back to Atlanta", I know enough about this stuff to believe that this is quite plausible. --- Jamie Hanrahan, Simpact Associates, San Diego CA Chair, VMSnet [DECUS uucp] and Internals Working Groups, DECUS VAX Systems SIG Internet: jeh@dcs.simpact.com, or if that fails, jeh@crash.cts.com Uucp: ...{crash,scubed,decwrl}!simpact!jeh