Hi everyone I just wanted to give an update on the SLCC venue search. Our venue team is very hard at work trying to find a great place at a great rate. I feel it is only fair to let everyone know that the search is moving very slow because October in Chicago is a very hot month for events. It seems that the major hotels are already booked up - leaving not a lot of hotel rooms or convention space for awesome events like SLCC. We are doing everything we can, calling every venue we know, and making a full whole hearted effort to make this the best event we possible can. We just appreciate your support!
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I have faith that we will be able to come up with something, but it may diverge from our original plans. We may need to look at August in Chicago versus October or having a larger, but smaller convention with say 750 attendees versus 1000. Last year we had 450-500, so moving up to 750 is a definite increase.
While talking about numbers it is extremely hard to gauge just how many residents we can expect with the population continuing to grow at exponential rates. We do not have the capacity for it to be more than 1000-1500 attendees at the most and that may even be stretching it a bit.
If anyone has any feedback on changing the date and whatnot please let us know .
August should be less intensive convention-wise, and if there’s anything I can do to help with the venue search please let me know. I am here in Chicago, and might be able to help you folks, I’ve got years in the tourism industry behind me, and a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the city’s assets and locales.
A thought on the date thing, August may be better. October is cold, add in Chicago’s wind and it can get bitter. Plus people may or may not have to request off of work, then a month later is Thanksgiving so they would be requesting off again. So more people are likely to take Thanksgiving with families then request time for a convention in Oct. Also dont forget the last weekend in August is DragonCon and I know alot of SL people go to that also.
One of the reasons we looked at the Fall originally was because of the ever rising costs of air travel and its *usually* less expensive after the summer peak time is over.
We may just have to bite the bullet and deal with higher airfare costs versus a smaller October event.
Weatherwise, August in Chicago can be extremely hot, though we can certainly do a day at the beach outing.
The heat usually sticks until about the 2nd week, thereafter August usually starts the move out of the high 80’s and above into the reasonable low 80’s and high 70’s.
Another advantage to August is that the beaches ARE yet open and lakefront fun such as boat tours and such are available and much, much more pleasant. October isn’t usually all that bad, but August is definitely more broadly seen as nice weather. ;-D
Thats good to know. When we visited Chicago in 2001 it was over the 4th of July weekend and it was hot. I got icky sunburn on the architectural boat tour.
Yea well from the last week of June through about the 2nd week of August is our peak heat section of the summer. Sorry about the burn, but I’m sure you had a great tour of the waterways, they do a good job. When you get here I’ll take you on the land based tour hehe! Funny thing, if you’d taken a trolley tour, I coulda been your guide then!
Wouldn’t that have been a hoot?
I give a vote for August, I am in the process of looking for places and events to ride to and well a trip to Chicago in August would be kick ass.. October would be a chilly ride.. Shuddderrr
August sounds better for wandering around outside and enjoying the city a bit more. Works for me!
Now if we can only get the Chicago-based Blue Man Group to show up….
Tom, if Blue Man Group were to show up, everyone would thing it was a bunch of SL’ers in their RL versions of their SL selves! hehehe Maybe even after they start tossing paint balls and spitting on canvas!
If it gets late enough in august it can coincide w/ my RL BD!
(8/28)
That last part of the month is usually pretty good (esp. in the evenings) though I’m in Des Moines, not in Chi-town. One concern though is that end of Aug. might also coincide with back to school, which might complicate several things.
What are the usual days of the week this is done on? (Fri-Sun?)
Good points Kalick. Chicago is a huge university town much like Philadelphia so I can dig that those dates might cause some travel woes or transportation woes.
Some linkage:
First is the 2007 Calendar of Events produced by the Mayor’s Office of Special Events - http://egov.cityofchicago.org/webportal/COCWebPortal/COC_EVENT/DateCard2007_4.pdf
Next is a link to the Navy Pier calendar page, toward the bottom right is a link for 2007 events, click that and it will spit out the booked stuff. Actually the Pier would be a very good venue for the Con, if we can get the ballroom, esp. I think the size might be right, the view is gorgeous, there’s GREAT mass transit in and out of the building, it’s on the lakefront, tons of shops and touristy stuff IN the building as well as boat and trolley tours right there. There are a number of hotels w/in 5 blocks, and short bus or cab rides away you’ll have the entire downtown/loop/North Michigan business district w/all of it’s assets and hotels.
http://www.navypier.com/cal_events/cal_home.html
Next bit is for McCormick Place, the biggest, baddest kid on the block for convention space. Doubt we’d want to do the event there, however it’s good to see when they’ve got big stuff coming in, as it will pull resources overall. It’s located just south of the museum campus and a few blocks east of Chinatown, but is semi-isolated from anything else folks will be directly attracted to without a short cab or bus ride. The complex is HUGE and does include a rather large Hyatt (rather nice one too).
http://www.mccormickplace.com/calendar.html
Next up is the Merchandise Mart, a humongous buiding (after Pentagon, it’s the largest office building world-wide) that holds numerous cons and trade shows. It’s located just over the river from the loop, has a hotel attached and is walking distance to all the downtown stuff, buses and cabs are abundant.
http://www.merchandisemart.com/calendar.html
I’m sending these in since I’m not sure that you’ve been looking at non-hotel options. Navy Pier, although lacking a direct hotel attachment, would be my #1 suggestion, for a myriad of reasons I’ve not begun to touch on here.
If you guys want more details, please feel free to contact me directly.
Yup. Might be good to figure out what good dates for some of the better locations are and then see what is likely to be better for travel out of those times. I’m planning on driving, since I’ll be bringing gear (or at least planning on it), and I just live about 300 miles down I-80.
Thanks for the links Madame. Can you drop me a line in world with your e-mail address. I’ll have Flipper add you to the SLCC email googlegroup for Chicago discussion and ideas. RIght now its just some of the organizers and volunteers trying to get things sorted out detail wise.
Finally, I get here to get caught up on the details as they are!
Madame, wow….what a great person to have involved! I would suggest too, that we could(after the lead organizers choose a venue and hotel) form a local group of organizers to continue to fine tune details. I am in WI, but only three hrs away, and spend some frequent times in Chicago. I also have experience in event planning for events well over 1000 people, and am currently going to school for hotel management/ convention planning. I was an attendee at the 2006 conference.
Jennyfur, all you have to do is give a shout.
Oh, yeah. madame’s idea of the Pier is a great one!
hmm August sounds much better for me! Hopefully I’ll start my first teaching job in September, and it’s probably a bad idea to take off my second month, untenured ;P
Can’t wait!
-Core
Emerie, we are always looking for regional coordinators and volunteers. It was one of the reasons that Chicago was so appealing to us. Starting a local SLCC group is a fantastic idea.
just wanted to throw my $L2 in..
i had been thinking about this for the past couple of months and thought August would be ideal. not quite the thick of summer, but decent weather.. but even more important, school. for those still in school, while August may bite a bit into the beginning of the year, in October school is in full swing.. and we don’t want to be responsible for people not getting their homework done, do we? hehe..
so, my vote goes to August.. much better all around: weather, school, time off from work, holiday interaction, and i’m sure there’s more i’m not thinking about. (besides, like has been mentioned, hotels are already booked up for October.. so maybe the higher cost of travel will be offset by a lower deal on hotel rates?)
Until after now,
Cybin
Its looking more and more like the con will end up being in August =)
We’re gonna need to come up with a nametag / VIP pass concept soon.
This might be premature but do the? will the? hotels have secure parking??
I would suspect that most major metropolitan hotels have their own lots. It is something we can definitely check in to.
Jennyfur.. i was thinking, since we have the location, that i would get on designing nametags really soon.. and by VIP pass, do you mean we need to seperate designs?
it’s going to be a rough go at it for a bit though, my father (in RL) passed away this morning, so things will be hectic.. but i’m sure amidst it all that i’ll come up with something to show you. (i’m pretty sure i still have your email addy, so whenever i come up with something, i’ll send it to you or Flipper.. or both)
Cybin: I’m sorry for your loss. No worries on the nametag design we have time.
thanks.. and.. umm.. thanks.
oh yeah.. and about the nametags.. are we looking at VIP and General designs? or was that one in the same?
(just in case i get any good ideas.. you know, emotions drive creativity and all that)
RE: VIP nametags/passes
One of the ideas we have been toying with is having a VIP lounge, that is a semi-private room with limited access where Lindens, organizers, sponsors, speakers can “take a breather” if they don’t want to spend 99.9% of the time on the floor mingling. Personally speaking its just nice to be able to sit down and collect your thoughts for a few moments. The VIP nametags/passes would be a limited run, probably under 100 total.
RE: Press Passes
We probably want some sort of special tag design for press
We also in general could do some color coding for different types of guests.
Sponsors get a red badge
Speakers get a blue badge
Organizers and Volunteers get a Yellow badge
Lindens get a pink badge etc….
The VIP and press passes would be in addition to the general badge design
Although there will be some people who are going to fall into multiple categories. I know at Philcon they used ribbon attachments to denote different things.
gotcha.. interesting.. i’m thinking of melding those two ideas. instead of ribbons, and instead of fully colored badges, we could have colored tabs/stripes/something to denote which categories each person falls under.
although having something to attach to the badges could be easier in implementation.. just clip i on (or whatever) at the convention as they get their badges.
but it could be that there would be 2 designs, VIP and General, with colored “tabs” being used with each design.
still not sure how we’ll do this, but i still really want to keep avatar pics a part of the design.
The color coded badges is a really good idea. Maybe make it so each badge has the color code then get a special stamp made so when people get their badges the appropriate (sp?) box can be stamped off.
We definitely need to stress pre-registration pick up. Its a waste of resources to have people manning the registration tables day and night after the main registration onslaught.
I would suggest that we approach the name tags as minimalistic as we can so that we don’t have 800 people waiting in line for a long process of getting the appropriate tags and items.
ok, that’s easily done. like i say.. i can design tags to include some sort of strips of color, so that part will be beforehand.
if we’re going to include pictures again (which we MUST), then we’ll have to get on everybody to send in those pics (decent close ups of faces would be good this time around) as early as possible.. or however we’re going to do it. not sure if we’re going to try the automated version again or not.. it seemed to be a bit odd last time around.
either way, i’ll get crackin on some designs.. but i would also like to know which place the convention will be held at, just in case i want to integrate that into the design.
i’ll try to whip something up as soon as i can, which may not be until next week.. but still, i’m excited to get back at it!
Just an FYI: I will be in Chicago for another conference at the end of June. I think we are using 3-4 hotels and doing activities in the area. Granted, it will be close to the conference date, but I can give you a “tourist” POV, if you are interested.
Let me know!
Hey guys,
I am also tentatively planning a weekend down there in March. Anything I can do, I would be much willing. Also, just to follow up on something that happened in game last week. I was at a gallery, and an artist approached me to offer to the SLCC designs for the agenda. Long story, but apparently he was asked to find me. not sure why, but I just told him, if we do decide with a custom agenda, we perhaps would be soliciting artwork from SL artists, maybe with a theme in mind. I told him i would get back to him. Any thoughts jennyfur?
Ya know, I was thinking myself on this color coded nametag, ribbon thingy. This is a wonderbar idea. Last convention, I know I had questions( i.e. where stuff was at the hall, when does this or that occur) and was unsure who to ask. If we had ribbons denoting who the “on floor” helpers were, this would eliminate having to constantly go back to the registration table for information or for trouble shooting during the event. just some organizational ideas..:-).
Emerie, I think someone got in touch with me on that and I forwarded their information on to the rest of the organizers.
Cybin - can you ping me offline with your email address and I will have Flipper send you an invite to our SLCC organizers email discussion list so we can discuss these various ideas.