Hey Guy have you guys narrowed down what states you might hold this Convention in?? I can give you a few tips and maybe help with some advice if needed along the way but this time I need to take a break from it all untill maybe Next time around. Being on the Convention committee twice was an enjoyable experience most of the time. It can get stressful if you shoot for the stars like we did for the last UAMCC Convention. The big mistake IMHO the last time was that the UAMCC started with a way to high guaranteed room block. If you don't meet the minimum on that its going to cost and can cost big. Jeff Might remember this better then me but we promised around a 500 room block. I guess the figuring was that if you can keep people there for lets say 4 days then you need 125 rooms a day blocked off. 3 days then approx 167 rooms blocked etc etc. Whatever, we promised to guarantee them 500 rooms. Now with that other things come much cheaper such as using Convention rooms. Might of had that thrown in for free or for a minimal cost. I don't remember the specifics but the panic feeling set in when we only had 300+ rooms booked. From what I was hearing back then because of not hitting our room block number this was going to cost the UAMCC $10,000 additional.
Without going down that road again when u think about it we did pretty darn good to book those 300+ rooms. Some people like myself and others paid for rooms to be given to a contest winner or whatever creative idea that we could come up with. In my case the winner was Darl Hite who won with a post on how he thinks the UAMCC can benefit him and his business. These were the type of donations that Guys like myself Jeff Rob and others did.....but........ it should have never came to that.
We aimed to high. Also when I was with the P*W* I was on the Convention Committee when we held that yearly convention in Memphis. That was a killer Convention but of course we got influenced by the higher ups to book a monster dinner for all. This Dinner ended up costing us around $35/person and we had around 250 people there so do the math. Also we had to pay other monies that were off the charts to our ED then. That Convention to this day bothers me because it should have made $20,000-$30,000 for the org. But the above blunders were very costly. We aimed hi there to but we got bamboozled from our own.
So my advice now would be to keep your heads on straight and when you get excited because you get some good news keep your feet grounded. If anyone wants to donate money thats up to them. Some will and some won't. I always did because I was pumped and I felt I got so much out of these conventions that I would easily make the money back when we go back to work and I did.
So Plan modestly, Be realistic,Don't get blinded by your passion, figure how much money your idea's will cost then figure out how much you should make from it. You want to make something out of it and these Conventions should be money makers and done up with as much class as you can muster.
Good luck and if there is any questions that you guys may need some help with and I can help with that feel free to call,email or post right here. Besides that I'll have to pass this time around to be involved with this committee.
For any others this is a numro important Committee and rewarding also. Many will thank you at the Convention and that alone is priceless. I would highly recommend to any UAMCC member that if you have the time and you want to see a good show consider on getting involved with this committee and if you don't have the time your ideas can also be helpful to. Just food for thought.