While I initially had the same concerns you had and was not even that personally impressed in our meeting with their promoters, I eventually decided it was the way to go for one reason, membership. Yes our trade needs a good show but I did the math, If we sent out 2000 invitations to the WISP-DIRECTORY list we might get about 3-400 people in our trade. Of those likely 200 would be our own members and likely we would add about 100 new members tops.
With this other show we stand the chance at being exposed to 1500 attendees, forging this new alliance would help to cement our integrated interests and have them start recommending their area WISP's, that's great for our membership. Also we might get their interest in joining so potentially adding hundreds of new members to WISPA. Even if they are affiliate members that still adds up to more than we get at our own show PLUS it would be more inviting for the other 1800 wisps to have something other than just us there. It just seems like an easier sell to WISP 's who aren't in WISPA, it might push a lot of business to our members and we potentially could see a much greater membership increase than if we did our own. That versus the hazard of losing money when we would rather spend it on filings and true WISPA business, that's my thinking anyway. Also for those who have stated we have made up our minds, those people are just people stirring s^&t, they speak from no fact whatsoever and just like to say the board just does what they want, it's crap, untrue. We've been very transparent and this debate is us taking that input and using it to weigh heavily in our decision. It's a huge decision, easy for members to say "hey you put on your own show" but just think about the work that would put on a volunteer board versus the idea of what I stated above. Most opinions I've read have been self serving ones, 'put it five miles from my house' kind of thing. We're trying to serve the entire country and those with the middle America approach are very valid for that reason. We'd really enjoy hearing these kind of ideas but if we sit here and argue where all day we'll never get to put it on and yet another WISPA initiative gets buried in minutia, as a board this is exactly what we are trying to stop. Forbes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
