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Dear CONvergence 2012, If the hotel that serves as your function space sells out its room block in 36 hours from the time it opens, then it may be time to look at a new venue. I love the Bloomington Radisson Sheraton Double Tree, I really do. It has served this convention very well for many a fun and incredibly inebriated, traffic-cone-wearing years. I have special love for the pool and cabana area, because the way it is laid out makes the room parties a unique experience with a level of guest interaction that would be nigh impossible to duplicate in any other environment. That rich engagement is a wonderful thing and I have many fond memories of CVGs past because of it. But if you can sell out the entire hotel within thirty-six hours of opening the room block, there is something wrong. To put a fine point on it, the thing that is wrong is your venue is woefully undersized for the needs of your (consistently expanding) audience. Your website's hotel page 1 says it all: 2 years ago, the room block at the Sheraton for the 2010 convention took 1 month to fill.
1 year ago, the room block at the Sheraton for the 2011 convention took 1 week to fill.
This year, the room block at the Double Tree (same building as the last two years) took roughly 36 hours to fill.
As our primary obligation is to the Double Tree, and we had worked with last year's fill rate of a week, and have not as yet secured all agreements with the Sofitel to be able to take room requests for that venue. Hopefully needless to say, we are working on securing that agreement, as well as an agreement with other hotels as rapidly as possible. We ask everyone's patience. I am a reasonable man. I accept that things that have limited supply and high demand will sell out quickly. But look at those metrics! They are telling an important story and the CVG board seems to be willfully ignoring that story. Since 2009, with every year that passes, you are selling out the main hotel's room block in approximately ¼ (1/4th) of the time of the year previous.We are talking about a hotel room here, not tickets to meet Bono in person, nor free ounces of gold (or, for those DS9 Trekkies out there, bars of gold-pressed latinum). You are not Ticket Master. These are hotel rooms we're talking about. These are part of the lifeblood of your convention. I refuse to sit, salivating, over the "register!" button. Spending time, on notice from an email, hoping to reserve a hotel room? Waiting with hundreds of other attendees for time to tick down and the lock to open so the mad frenzy may begin to reserve a place we pay to sleep? That is not how I want to spend my time. It is disrespectful to expect us to expend our time this way as convention attendees. The second paragraph on the hotel page, about the obligation to Double Tree and having not yet secured agreements with Sofitel? This simply highlights the problem. The demand has far outstripped the capability of the existing facility to support this convention's needs. If a thirty-six hour sell-out is a surprise and you do not have alternate options readily available (without the hotel page giving a chiding warning to people who choose to be proactive instead of becoming victims of an artificial shortage that, "any reservations made at the Sofitel before we have reached an agreement may not receive a convention rate") then you are Doing It Wrong. Either understand you have an overwhelming demand that is growing every year and plan accordingly (hint: that means having your plans with Sofitel and other venues in place before the main hotel sells out) or move. Anything else is penalizing your attendees. I love this convention, but I'm starting to wonder if the people who are in charge are so in love with memories of a facility that they cannot see how they are doing their key demographic (hint: the Convention Attendees) a crucial disservice. And while I am but one man, I am surely not alone in feeling that the already frustrating & convoluted experience of dealing with the CVG Hospitality Staff paired with the inability to get a room booked IN OCTOBER is enough to put me off attending the con at all. Yours, -Feren This entry was originally posted at http://feren.dreamwidth.org/430572.html. Tags: 2011, conventions, convergence, cvg, cvg2012, gruntle
Current Location: Bolingbrook, IL
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"Tessa" - Laid to rest 8/14/2011
(Photo taken 8/14/2010)
You were 24 years old, Tessa, so I struggle to think of a time without you. You've been a fixture of life here on the farm. You were gentle, patient and beautiful. My mother will be heartbroken without you but in time she will take comfort in knowing that she gave you as good a life as there was to be had. I want you to know we buried you next to your son today, so Ace could be close to you. May you run where the pastures are always green, there are no flies to bother you and sweet corn is only a short trot away. 
"Tessa" with my mother
(Photo taken Aug 14, 2010)
Tags: 2011, farm, horse, pets
Current Location: Prior Lake, MN
Current Mood:  sad
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In preparation for the arrival of my parents, who should be here any time in the next hour, I put a space heater into the guest bedroom and turned it on. The guest bedroom in my house is at the farethest end of the furnace's limits so it tends to be chillier than the rest of the house in winter and can use a bit of auxillary heating. Five minutes after I turned the heater on, the lights in the master bedroom and the office (a repurposed bedroom) went dark. The UPS units in the office went bezerk. Was I having a brown-out? No, the furnace was still running and the light in the den was on. Huh. Off to the laundry closet I go, where a few seconds of looking later I can find a tripped circuit breaker. I reset the breaker, turn the electric space heater in the guest room down and go back to the office. About a minute and a half later, the UPS alarms are going off again and I'm sitting in the (relative) dark. Sigh. Back up, back to the laundry room, reset the circuit breaker. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) lady_curmudgeon suggested replacing the big space heater with her smaller ceramic-based unit. I do so, and once again three minutes later it's BEEP-BEEP-BEEP in the dark time. I have run a heater in the guest room before and never had this problem, so this new set of circumstances vexes me mightily. I am making my way out of the office and cursing when I notice in the living room the Christmas tree lights are off, too. Wait, what? Reset the circuit breaker, turn off the heater in the guest room completely and review what I know. I knew that all three bedrooms are strung on a single electrical circuit, but why is the livingroom off? Back into the breaker panel I go, and I reread the chickenscratch handwriting on the legend. "Bedrooms/living room." Then I look at the breaker - it's 10 15 amps. TEN FIFTEEN. AMPS. Ten Fifteen amps to run the master bedroom, the guest room, the living room and the office. But wait! I also know from tinkering about in my electrical panel that this same circuit also serves the master bathroom, the guest bathroom AND the garage. You know, the garage that has the flood lamps for the flag pole plugged into it. TEN FIFTEEN. AMP. BREAKER. The way I was taught electrical work, while growing up, was to put every room on its own circuit with its own breaker. Clearly the contractor who wired this house was taught no such thing and had no qualms snaking wire hither, thither and yon throughout the walls and connecting an unnecessarily long leg attach to a single breaker. This explains everything: with the new flood lamps for the flag pole running off the garage, the exterior Christmas lights running off the garage, the Christmas tree lights running in the guest room and the various other electronic widgetry I've added over the intervening years (cell phone charges, new clock radio, etc) I've taken this breaker and pushed it to the very edge. The additional resistive load of a space heater takes that precarious balance and kicks it right off the cliff. Great, so now I know what I'm doing for my spring project in the house! In the next few months I'll be plotting which walls are coming down, amassing conduit to put in and when it's "Go Time" I will be replacing this snarl of copper-clad aluminum crap with proper romex. I'll have to hire an electrical contractor to replace the breaker panel (it's far too small and doesn't have nearly enough breaker positions to take each room onto its own circuit) but that's fine. Hell, while I'm in there I'll have to see about the feasibility of pulling a 50 amp 240 line into the garage to run a sub-panel so I can put in my welder and air compressor. I can't help but keep coming back to the thought that some lazy bastard thought a single 110v 15 15 amp breaker serving all those rooms was acceptable or even "good enough." Oh, to travel back in time and slap some contractors... Tags: 2010, electrical, gruntle, house
Current Mood: aggravated
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We're back home from my family's farm after having been away from home for almost a full week. We missed the cats and they missed us, though the neighbor did a good job of keeping Ra and Diva fed and watered. Jazz was, as usual, boarded with the veterinarian so she could have her proper medical treatments (pill and sub-cutaneous fluids) to remain stable and healthy. The visit was good, except for the part where my father was nearly crushed to death under 4,800 pounds of truck. Thankfully he's okay. He is badly brusied and scraped up, but is okay. I think the swelling in his hand had visibly gone down some today before we set out on the drive back to Illinois. Food is what Thanksgiving always centers around to some extent, and there was food in great quantity over this vacation. Wednesday, after arriving at the farm, we had a pair of giant bake-at-home pizzas. Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday was delightful: it consisted of BBQ turkey (just a hint of barbeque to go with the turkey, juicy, fine and crispy skin), mashed potato, corn, beans, squash and a few other side dishes. Friday was leftover day and the aforementioned incident with the truck. Saturday we had carry-out chinese to break up the monotony and on Sunday we had barbequed steaks. Like all the trips to visit the place I grew up, this vacation came to and end far too quickly. While I accomplished everything I had intended during our stay, I'm still left feeling vaguely disappointed that I didn't do more for my parents while I was there. And, like the trip to the farm in August for my birthday, this feels as if it was far too short in duration. Now that I'm home I can feel a cloud creeping back around me. It's mixed in nature, ranging from depression at leaving the farm behind to anxious desire to return to work. Very likely I will be a moody, unhappy person until I get back into the groove and can bury myself in the routine of my professional life (which usually eclipses my personal life). There are stars in the southern skyTags: 2010, family, farm, thanksgiving, vacation
Current Location: Illinois
Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Half Life 2 - Abandoned In Place
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