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Conference News: 2012 Conference-onomics
Our Annual Conference program is longer and richer than ever, and you'll also get more bang for your buck. Read what Annual Conference Chair Doug Duda has to say after running the numbers. And remember: Early Bird savings last until February 10.
By Doug Duda, Annual Conference Chair
We thought long and hard about your pocketbook as we planned this year’s conference, March 29 - April 2, 2012 in NYC. Here are three key pricing decisions we made, and how they will affect you:
We wanted to keep Early Bird cost-per-conference-day in New York this year to be about the same as in Austin last year.
Last year it was $161 per day for a four-day conference. This year it’s $160 per day for a five-day conference. For years you’ve been asking for conference in New York and been told it’s unaffordable. But we’ve found ways this year to make it work.
We couldn’t stomach the $102.60 lunch.
When we considered how many of us are already scheming to devour the city, we decided to leave the amount the hotel would charge for your lunch in your pocket. And we started planning fantastic, off-site author lunches (we’ll provide more details about these in early February). Why not take advantage of local restaurants’ hunger to offer deals to get authors into their establishments, provide access to the dining experiences you’ll really value, and pass the savings on to you?
We needed to offer a special deal to get non-members to conference.
One of our secret weapons in making this year’s conference affordable is to spread the costs across a larger number of attendees. This year, non-members who are discovering - or rediscovering - IACP at conference will pay the member conference rate, plus $50, covering both initiation and a trial Professional or Emerging Professional membership through June 30, 2012. The bargain for them helps us offer a bargain to you, both this year and next year in San Francisco, too. So when you see unfamiliar faces at conference this year, give them the official New York City welcome: place your hand on your wallet, feel that your money is still there, and smile!
For additional Annual Conference highlights and registration information, click here. And, non-members, we want to meet you in NYC, so read more about our special conference offering, here.
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Doug Duda, IACP Vice President, has been overseeing the 2012 Annual Conference in New York City, where he produces culinary events.
Your Comments
Please check your math, you want to make the conference more affordable so you have 5 days at $170 ($850) compared to 4 days at $161 ($644) plus now you have an extra hotel night and meals in the most expensive city in the U.S. You call this making it more affordable? I am looking at it costing over $500 more than Austin. Does membership vote on locations for the conference? If my vote counted, I would vote on virtually any place except NYC, so no thanks, NO NYC for me. Dennis Hayes
Hi, Dennis, Thanks so much for your feedback. I hear your distress and I’m terribly sorry we won’t see you in NYC, but we’ve taken great care to keep the costs comparable to Austin this year. The Early Bird full conference rate is actually $800 for 5 days (the price dropped since this article was originally written for Frontburner: http://www.iacp.com/attend/more/program_registration_2) or $160/day. We’ve also built in additional registration options to allow members to customize length of stay to their budgets: we have a 4-day weekend pass option available at $162/day, and day pass options for every day of the week. The preferred rate at the Millennium is also exceptional, and it is often cheaper (esp. for our overseas members) to fly into major hubs as opposed to airports in smaller cities. All-in, we believe the costs to members have been kept very comparable; we also believe that the programming is some of the strongest in recent years, so in looking at value delivered for every dollar paid, we’re hoping conference goers will be very pleased. Membership does provide input into locations and conference format via our annual conference feedback survey, and also informally throughout the year by contacting IACP HQ and conference coordinators. The selections of NY and SF as host cities reflect an accumulation of feedback received over recent years that there was a desire to return to major food cities. Site selection for 2014 is underway so I encourage you and any other members to forward feedback to HQ (or to me personally) if there are cities you’d prefer to see in the mix. The actual site selection process is complex, however - the board does its very best to balance member preferences with availability, cost, and other factors.
Also thanks for pointing out the typo in the above paragraph; I’ve since changed the per day pricing to reflect what is now being offered.
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