I have to say I'm a bit annoyed at SVP at the moment. I recently read an email from SVP President Blair Van Valkenburg that states they couldn't find a room big enough to hold all of us, so they are going to change the awards banquet to a simple ceremony. While I'm really looking forward to the conference, the fact that we don't get an awards banquet this year is kind of annoying. I understand that the economy is in the crapper, but I find it hard to believe that the university doesn't have a room large enough to hold us all. Where do they hold their graduation ceremonies?
I feel that I paid a lot to register (even as a student) as well as $1100 (CDN) for the flight, and will be paying around $115 (US) per night for the hotel, plus then food and incidentals. I think the least they could do is have a banquet. The food doesn't have to be spectacular - I'd be happy with sandwiches and chips. And I'd bet good money that when the economy does pick back up that the banquet will still be history. Actually, I found it rather amusing that she mentioned that there will not be food during coffee breaks (just cookies) because I can only think of one meeting where there was real food during coffee breaks and that was at Bozeman. I remember everyone being surprised and delighted at the food and snarfing down.
I won't even go into the whole Attenborough lecture fiasco - especially since I ended up getting tickets much to my surprise.
Oh well. I'm still be attending and looking forward to seeing everyone and being in Bristol, even if it means I have to give up the banquet.
1 comment:
Hmm, can't leave pseudonymous comments. Bugger. Obviously I'll have to be careful about what I say then!!
Sadly, it is all too likely that there isn't room to accommodate everyone for a banquet layout. Most British universities probably have rooms that can accommodate 1000 or so people sitting theatre-style, but throw in tables and space for waiting staff to pass through and that pretty much halves the numbers.
And I did overhear concerns about accommodating everyone last year. The problem is that we're a tiny, overcrowded island, and our hotels just aren't big enough either. Doing a quick search, most of them will only take 400 theatre-style.
We have conference centres, but really SVP would have had to be in London, Birmingham, Glasgow or Manchester to be able to accommodate everyone to the extent that the North American meetings do.
I'll message you on Facebook with the thoughts that it would be inappropriate of me to divulge in public...
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