Thanks so much to all of you for the comments you sent regarding the 2008 conference site. It’s wonderful to know that you’re reading NASIG-L announcements and interested in the annual conference locations. The Site Selection committee welcomes all comments at

site-select@nasig.org. We love to hear your suggestions and comments and we take them very seriously.

The room rate is the NUMBER one consideration when we evaluate possible conference sites. Approximately 50 different bids for the 2008 conference were reviewed and many were discarded due to high room rates. We are very aware of the limited budgets NASIG members have to work with when attending a conference and we try very hard to find sites that are:

*Affordable

*Functional

*Interesting

*Accessible

We work with professional meeting planning organizations to identify and select viable sites.

We welcome suggestions from NASIG members. Conference evaluations are carefully read and we take note of any future conference site locations that are suggested on the evaluations. We have tried very hard to keep conference fees the same for NASIG members from year to year, so the concessions offered by hotels on food/beverage and AV play an important consideration in our deliberations. You might be interested to know that the meeting rooms used in the hotels are given to us gratis because of the budgeted allocation for meals and receptions.

Resorts have been suggested for several years and this location offered an opportunity to try it. The room rate for the 2008 conference will be

$125 PLUS TAX PER NIGHT FOR A SINGLE OR A DOUBLE ROOM.

The resort has waived the daily resort fee as one of the concessions. If you have a roommate (and the rooms are quite spacious) then the cost per night will be $63 plus tax per night. This is a Hilton Hotel/Resort, so as noted in one the emails it will be a registration process just like a regular Hilton Hotel.

The actual Thursday through Sunday portion of the conference will be June 5-8, 2008 with possible pre-conferences on June 4th and 5th. Make sure you mark your calendars!

Site Selection is a complicated, time consuming process and we are always on the look out for possible conference sites. We look for hotels that can host the entire conference so we don’t have to pay the fees for a convention center. Fees for convention centers can get quite expensive, whereas hotels will waive meeting room fees if we meet our sleeping room and food/beverage commitments.

The Site Selection Committee hopes to work with the Electronic Communications Committee this spring to get an online survey out to the membership on site selection and preferences in locations throughout the country, costs of rooms and other issues. So, keep reading your NASIG-L announcements and respond to the survey when it appears. We need and want your input!! Thanks!

The Site Selection Committee,

Denise Novak, Char Simser, Joyce Tenney