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----- Original Message -----From: nycsfo@aol.comSent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 4:33 AMSubject: Re: [AGA-conheads] AGA membership and convention...Erik,
Thanks for explanation. I agree membership has its' privileges. However, if you know how many members you have, and how many have shown up to the convention in the past, shouldn't it then be easier to predict how many rooms you will sell based on those numbers so that the AGA at least breaks even on the convention? (It's late...and while that question looks correct...it also looks a bit like predicting the weather...so let me know if I am off base there).
I think it is great that the board has revisited and re-vamped its' policies over the years concerning this issue. I think the bottom line is, does the AGA want to make some profit during a convention, or just throw a shin dig for its' members? If you want to make some profit (and want group doesn't want to add some padding to their treasury?), I see no harm or foul letting in local folks or others who aren't members. Perhaps have them pay the non-member price as you suggest. I'm sure you all have spent more time discussing it then I have in my two e-mails.
As far as the two folks who mentioned it to me. Before you start being hard on them for what seems like a trivial differences in costs (membership vs. registration), I will tell you this...they are both college students...on very, and I mean VERY limited budgets. For those of you who are reading this who have lived through the college years, then you know that $20 difference might as well be $500. So don't sweat the existence of any vocal naysayers out this way. It's really just two poor college students. And as I said in my last e-mail, it was mentioned in passing, not as a diatribe or anything.
Michael Laflamme
PS...was that a Freudian slip when you said "there are others whom the bouncers maybe asked to barr"
;^)
-----Original Message-----
From: erik@thekrib.com
To: aga-conheads@thekrib.com
Sent: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: [AGA-conheads] AGA membership and convention...
On Sat, 14 Oct 2006, nycsfo@aol.com wrote: > Why is it folks are not allowed to attend (and pay) for the convention > if they are not AGA members? Hi Michael, At this point, it isn't going to change. I offered a counter-proposal to the board a few weeks ago and it was struck down. So this is for information only: There are a few reasons, actually. And I suspect we've posted some of this on this list (though with no search engine on the archives...). The simple answer... it's a member perk. Why join a society? To reap the benefits of the society. It's AGA's Convention. It's for AGA's members. I could ask, for instance, why doesn't SFBAAPS open its online forum up to the public? Because SFBAAPS considers its forum a member perk. AGA considers the convention a member perk. Lots of other clubs and societies do this with their conventions. At one point several years back, we considered having a "non-member rate". But that rate would have been 10 or 20 dollars more than the member rate, so it evolved into "non-member rate $15 more -- includes membership." (Membership was $15 or so back then). In 2003, we had the issue of local clubs. Since the host local club would be theoretically putting in most of the work to make the event happen (and share in the liability of the event), it seemed fair to allow their members as well. So the caveat was added "OK, you can be a member of the local club instead of the AGA". That's great if the local club costs $10 or $20 to join. But what if the local club is completely free to join? Well, obviously given a choice of joining the AGA or a free local club, all the walk-ins will opt to join the local club. "I can always join the AGA later...later...later..." A nice loophole. So we etched out a compromise. We actually worked out this compromise with GWAPA in 2004, because they also had no membership fee, and extended it to SFBAAPS. We took a cutoff of the day the registration opened; all members at that time would be grandfathered in (most were actually AGA members to begin with). But we wouldn't allow walkins to just join the local club in order to avoid AGA membership. I and others have already posted that removing the requirement altogether this late in the game is not fair to those who already joined when they registered. For that reason alone, we can't change it. However, consider this: Most conventions raise the cost by $10 or $20 for late registrations. We could do this, even now. Late registration $79. Same price. No membership required or included. I proposed that to the board, because I know that registration desk is going to get hit by walk-in complaints, and I bet less people whine about paying a $20 late fee than they do a $20 AGA membership.... But the board wants to keep it as it is, membership required. I did suggest that we not add the late fee, so that the folks doing registration can at least help deflect some of the complaining there. And the board concurred on that (I think). I have to ask, though... The registration fee is already very low, as low as we could possibly do it. It's $59! So we've got people saying they can afford $60 but not $80. Hmm... The rooms are $99 per night. Are those people who truly can't afford another $20 for a membership going to be also booking hotel rooms and helping fill roomnight requirement? Or are they going to be crashing on someone's floor or just coming for the day? Are they going to be buying plants in the auction, or just trading them in the hallway? Or maybe they just are complaining on principal, just as some folks will avoid registering at all, on that same principal (not even talking about folks participating on this list -- there are others whom the bouncers may be asked to barr). Is it really significant, or just a couple of very vocal people? - Erik -- Erik Olson erik at thekrib dot com _______________________________________________ aga-conheads mailing list aga-conheads@thekrib.com http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/aga-conheads_______________________________________________
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