Chicago Conference Attendees Point to Chicago Shortcomings

Brian Beutler posts his beliefs on why there are so few electric outlets available here at YearlyKos 2007 conference:

” The McCormick Convention Center is, unsurprisingly, operated by a series of labor groups who, working hand in hand, rip apart the building and put it back together to fit the needs of whichever group happens to be renting space here. So for YearlyKos, the teamsters, and the plumbers, and the electricians all come in to haul partitions, and divert piping, and… lay wiring. One catch is, of course, that the more wiring you need, the more you have to pay. The other, less obvious catch, is that any wiring you try to do yourself–running extension chords and power strips across the room–might well violate your contract and cost you a big fine. So the result is a lot of dead laptop batteries. At a frickin’ blogger convention.”

Matthew Yglesias points out similar sentiment.

Then last weekend Kristy Sammis, the wonderful hard-working conference organizer, pointed out the following issues on her blog in regards to Blogher07:

“The City of Chicago has a lot of rules. A LOT of them. And also taxes. And fines. Like, did you know that there’s a 3% soda tax? Or that our caterer could have lost his license for letting attendees leave with bottles of wine, even though the nice people at Hess were willing to give the extras out? Or that moving one single air wall would have cost FOUR HOURS of labor?”

“The shuttles cost approximately 18 billion dollars. (They would have only cost 17 billion, but we paid that extra billion to have a dedicated dispatcher ensuring that all five shuttles were running all day.)

I do not know why the drivers didn’t know where they were going. I don’t know why they just sometimes stopped showing up. I don’t know why they weren’t labeled, a la BLOGHER SHUTTLE. And I really don’t know HOW you can get into an accident when you’re driving at 3 miles an hour in Pier traffic.

But I, too, would sure like to find out.”

Kristy so would I. Why is Chicago turning off it’s last golden goose, the conference industry? If we can’t run shuttle buses less than a mile for 800 people how can this city possibly even dream of executing on hosting huge events with the current state?

As someone who spends alot of time at Chicago conferences, the time to improve these situations is now – before there are no more Chicago conferences.