>this means they reflexively shy away from
associating it with doing serious business.
This definitely seems to be the case in Hawaii but
there's probably a bit more to it. Vegas has a major
marketing campaign going on these days about "what
happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". Exactly which part
of that is about "serious" business? And yet major
business conventions, tech and otherwise, are held in
Vegas on a regular basis year after year (Comdex
anyone?).
Same is true about the theme parks in Orlando (Disney,
Epcot, Universal...). Lot's of fun in the sun there
but it really doesn't stop "serious business" in the
form of conventions from ocurring regularly.
The dirty little secret about conventions is that
there is _always_ a junket aspect to them and it
doesn't matter whether you're in Minnesota in January
or the Bahamas (or Hawaii).
It's serious business but not business as usual or
ordinary, just different (it's about networking and
taking a break from the rat race that you usually deal
with in Oshkosh or wherever, and refreshing yourself
with new ideas).
In the case of Hawaii, I wonder if it's also about
cost and perception as much as anything else (i.e.,
it's expensive to fly those extra 3K miles from the
left coast and Hawaii simply isn't regared as a
significant tech area).
--- Jim Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Clifton Royston wrote:
>On Sun, Jan 29, 2006 at 11:17:37PM -1000, Jim
Thompson wrote:
>
>
>>On Jan 29, 2006, at 10:23 PM, Matt Darnell wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>I really don't follow this. For the most part,
people did not attend
>>>>because of the time of year, time of week, and
time of day. Next
>>>>year
>>>>we will do this on Friday and Saturday.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I hope changing the day makes a big difference.
>>>
>>>
>>We've had some feedback. (I saw Scott ask people
for it.) Here is
>>what I remember of it:
>>
>>1) Don't count on people from off-island
attending. I believe that
>>TPOSSCON has been 'marketed' as "come to Hawaii,
enjoy the beach,
>>learn some great stuff, hang out with cool
people". Based on what
>>I've seen over the last two years, and an earlier
experience when the
>>IETF held a meeting in
>>Honolulu (1989), I don't believe that folks can
"sell" their own
>>management on attending a technical conference in
Hawaii.
>>
>>
>
> Yes. Pat Sullivan of Oceanit and Hoana Medical
has made some very
>astute and enlightening comments on this, and I
have seen it over and
>over again in my technical career here.
>
> Our tourism industry has spent many millions of
dollars a year over
>many decades to inculcate the image of Hawaii as a
place that is
>carefree, where no serious work gets done. If most
national executives
>and managers have any experience of Hawaii, they
think of it as a place
>where they had a wonderful time on a honeymoon, or
golfing on a
>luxurious vacation - this means they reflexively
shy away from
>associating it with doing serious business.
>
> A story of my own: When I was with VeriFone and
involved in setting
>up training for customers' application programmers
(major
>national/international banks) 8 times out of 10,
our customers'
>corporate management would not approve sending
their programmers to
>Hawaii for training as it was automatically viewed
as a junket.
>Sometimes when they did send someone, they'd send a
non-progamming
>manager as a "reward", even though that was useless
in helping them get
>their applications off the ground. We ultimately
had to move the
>application training centers to the mainland.
Eventually the company
>headquarters went too, for essentially the same
reason.
>
> This is something we'd better just live with and
plan around, because
>it will take decades to reverse it. If you want to
work around it, it
>will have to be done on a case-by-case basis, using
an extensive media
>campaign in national tech-oriented media to make
the case that this is
>different. If you don't have a budget for that,
then focus efforts on
>boosting local attendance.
>
>
Thus, its best to avoid attempting to generate the
audience from
anywhere but Hawaii (and Oahu, in particular).
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