[ST] [CP] Arisia going to 4 days

[Skip Morris]

On 1/31/07, rob bazemore <bazemore at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Well the decision to go to 4 days is for the conchair to propose.
> The final say does rest at the corp level since the corporation has to
> approve the hotel contract.
> The hotel contract may be the deciding factor AFTER  the conchair feels it
> is worth persuing a 4th day.

That's an interesting point.  One thing that was mentioned during the inital
hotel search was the possibility of going four days.  The hotel stated (back
then) that they would be very interested and would give Arisia a lower room
rate overall if we did a third day.

> I personally would not want to work a 4 day con except at the World Con
> level. I do not have a real say since I have not attended an Arisia since
> 1997. It sounds like Arisia is too large for the hotel they are in for what
> people have come to expect from Arisia. (Hopefully no one decides that we
> need to downsize Arisia by moving to Pittsfield.)

Balticon does four days (Memorial Day weekend).  This might be the year
for Arisia folks to attend Balticon and see how they handle it.  Adding an
extra day does present lots of challenges, it's be worth finding out what
another group did to solve the same problems.  Maybe the final 18 hours
should be just a relaxicon or wind-down time.

> What do the fans really want?

At Arisia '05.5 (the blizzard of '05), those that were stuck in the hotel for
the extra day loved it.  I think that was what started the requests for an
extra day.

One thing I think we should do in regards to how we handle an extra
day is attempt to use the time to do the same amount of stuff we did
at the Park Plaza.  This year we had roughly the same amount of staff
as in prior years (judging from the staff tshirt count), but number and
size of what we did was supposed to be smaller. It seemed to me
though that this was a much more stressful year on the staff.

> Is it time to start looking at a summer con?

We kinda tried this as a one day event last summer for the staff.

> Is it time to encourage groups that have traditionally been at Arisia to
> hold their own conventions?

I hope not.  One of Arisias strengths is its diverse character.

/Skip