Re: Early bird special for COMMON - COMMON Housing

["Steve McKay" <Steve.McKay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A. Ports wrote -
"Compared to other non profit/volenteer conferences you are expensive ."

To what non profit/volunteer AS/400/iSeries conferences do you refer?

"Common should be able to  review their records and determine how
attendance is tracking against conference fees and accommodation prices"

Easy to say, hard to do . . . for instance, suppose COMMON looked at
conference fees/accomodation prices/attendance for the fall conference in
Minneapolis . . . how does one determine what effect 9/11 had on
attendance?  Yes, you can look at how many cancellations occurred after
9/11 but you are only inferring that the events of 9/11 caused the
cancellations.  How would one determine how many reservations were never
made due to 9/11?  Granted that most conferences are not preceded by a
tragedy such as WTC/Pentagon/PA, but there *are* other factors to consider
other than strictly cost vs. attendance.

"Today's four day conferences have many people leaving early on day four as
they did on day five.  This is a very normal happening for the last day of
most conferences."

I don't deny this but the attendee could more easily justify leaving early
on Friday since the conference only ran until noon than he/she could
justify leaving early on Thursday when the last session ends at 7:45 PM.
BTW, even though the conference only ran through noon on Friday, COMMON has
to pay the convention center for the whole day!  (But you knew that . . .)

Steve