aloft said:
I know where you're coming from, Kristie--nonetheless, this is a rather odd comment given all the superlatives gushing forth about the event!
sure, we had a good time.. but I don't think it's odd at all...we had an excessive amount of no-shows compared to last year... we did have a few who txt msg'd the day of saying they weren't going to make it, but honestly...it's all about the time & costs associated.
Heck, i even kept everyone on the contact list apprised of the situation until they told me they weren't going to make it, then i took them off the list... all weekend, I was txt msging to let ppl know where we were when, what was going on etc etc.. that's an excessive amount of work on my part because honestly, i didn't *have* to do that.
Doug and I were talking about this a bit earlier... if we're sponsoring an event, then we need most of the people who say they're going to come, to come to the event.. we pay for food, drink, a place to stand around & talk, we get information from our advertisers to hand out, we have goodie bags, posters & prizes ready to go (and Pengy works really HARD on gathering everything too), we set up somewhat of an itinerary... and nametags, i won't tell you how much time it takes to do the nametags & contact list alone...esp when i have a full time job and a website of my own to work on (not that i'm complaining about doing all of this cuz i'm not - i'm happy to do it!!)
speaking of contact list - we might not be doing that anymore since we had so many no-shows...first and foremost because of the fact that i give the attendee information out and I'm no longer comfortable with doing that since someone can easily sign up, no show and have someone else's personal information....
not to mention that doug and I would have had a ton more fun if we hadn't have had to go out get food/drinks...We had more of a happy hour/gathering type networking session in mind this time, so we decided to do it ourselves, save some $$ and get everything set up and ready on our own... heck, we didn't even get to do a JC craps table or hang out with anyone saturday morning/afternoon because of time & hotel issues...
we heard everyone speak last year about not holding the event in a convention/conference type setting, so we decided to take the money we would have paid for a meeting room and put it into a suite instead...neither one of those (esp in vegas) is cheap. the only thing we depend on with vegas is that it's self entertaining, so if doug and I have to go do somethings ahead of time, it's all good and everyone has something to do - it worked great for our wedding.
the only way Doug and I know that everything we do for NJC is appreciated, is by who and how many show up to take advantage of the situation.
so, if things like this are gonna happen where we get 2/3 as no-shows, then doug and I might scrap the whole networking thing and just say "doods, we're going to vegas, anyone wanna meet us up there?" and be done with it....cuz then we don't have to set anything up and we, ourselves, can go play too. We don't do this for our benefit... it's for yours.