Re: COMMON in San Antonio (fwd) -- MIDRANGE-L

Don wrote:
> 
> WHOA HERE....
> 
> Charley, am I hearing you, Bob, et al (don't let it throw you Bob) that
> you're going to be wanting to handout a CDROM at the start of COMMON
> instead of the handouts during the sessions?
> 
> Uh, this is going to REQUIRE each attendee to have a laptop with
> CDROM...this means probably more seating space requirements and in all
> liklihood require DESKS/TABLES where there are none...and what happens if
> someone's battery goes dead in a session...?  I think that REQUIRING is
> going to open a big can o'worms and additional costs that I'm not sure
> COMMON is ready to deal with....
> 

Just thought I'd throw my .02 in on this.

My company can't afford to send ALL the programmers to every Common(how
do you explain to 30+ clients that ALL the programmers and support
people will be out of town for an entire week). We use the handouts(and
the notes written on each) to go over with the people who could not
attend, or the ones who did attend and couldn't make that particular
presentation.

Also, there are so many presentations that we want to see that we can't,
simply because of schedule conflicts,or just can't squeeze into, so we
rely on the handouts to at least get some idea of what the presentation
was about. Any of the people who stood 5 deep at the doorway of some of
the JAVA and Notes and Year 2000 presentations in Chicago know what I'm
talking about.

Yes, a CD-ROM with ALL the handouts, received 1-2 weeks before the
conference, would be ideal. But as stated in previous posts, many times
the handouts are not ready until just before the conference begins.
Several times some of our people have not even received their badges or
agendas until one or two days before the conference. So getting all the
handouts on CD-ROM to all the attendees beforehand is a pipedream.

Do I have a solution? No.  Is requiring all presenters to have their
handouts in a month beforehand possible? Not if don't want to lose some
of people who give the best presentations. Is printing more handouts the
answer? Maybe, at the cost of a few thousand trees. Being able to burn
your own personal CD-ROM sound interesting, but would probably be a
nightmare logistically.

Maybe we should all get together at Dick's one night and take a vote. 

-- 
Lou Schmaus
Creative Computer Associates, Inc.
Parlin, NJ 08859
lschmaus@home.com

--
The opinions expressed here are not necessarily those
of my employer, unless it is billable.
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