Comments on: Wireless at ALA: Empty Your Piggybanks

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By: Walt Crawford

Walt Crawford — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 16:47:59 +0000

Ah. OK. I just misread your original entry. Not enough coffee.

Simple: San Diego and Orlando are gouging. And will keep doing so exactly as long as the CC managements think they can get away with it.

That wasn’t hard.

Sorry for the confusion on my part.

By: K. G. Schneider

K. G. Schneider — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 16:07:04 +0000

Walt, please. Ignore Monterey for a moment. I wasn’t suggesting ALA would ever meet there; as a fairly well-read Councilor, I know ALA can only meet in a handful of enormous cities.

Put on your thinking cap. Now, think about Philadelphia. Why is wireless reasonable in Philly, and exorbitant in Orlando and San Diego? Because it actually costs more to provide wireless in Orlando or San Diego? 250% more? Come on… that’s hooey.

By: Walt Crawford

Walt Crawford — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:27:38 +0000

Just at a guess, the smaller conference centers have to compete a lot more–there are a lot more of them, the groups that will fit in smaller venues are more cash-sensitive, etc.

ALA is sort of an anomaly–mostly not-very-wealthy, not-well-supported attendees, but big and complex enough (with all those meetings in particular) so that very few cities qualify.

In some ways, I’m guessing, the quality/pricing/services of the Convention Center are less significant than the number of full-service hotel rooms available within a 2-mile radius and the number of meeting rooms within a 1-mile radius (since very few conference centers, no matter how large, have more than a couple dozen meeting rooms–and ALA doesn’t use enough exhibit space to grab all the meeting rooms in the very-large centers).

ALA isn’t going to meet in Monterey no matter how wonderful the convention center is–or in San Jose, for that matter. The surrounding infrastructure just isn’t there.

Then again, people who build convention centers aren’t always that bright. Near the end of 2000, I spoke at a state library conference held in a brand-new conference center. That center had no, zero, nada built-in Internet access for its meeting spaces. Never mind wireless: This place didn’t have ready-to-run access at all.

By: K. G. Schneider

K. G. Schneider — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 19:07:40 +0000

Basically, if it’s big enough to house ALA, it’s going to be roughly comparable, yes? Monterey is a smaller setting, but that just points up the anomaly. $25 per person, per day, is $750 a month for individual wireless access. That’s really high.

By: Eli

Eli — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 18:32:42 +0000

“sausage artisans” … hee.

A couple of questions:

How big is the Philadelphia Convention Center in comparison to SDCC? Monterey’s center is so much smaller than San Diego’s — I wonder if a factor of cost is how big the network has to be and how many hubs need to be distributed around the function space to avoid major dead spots?

You may want to gather price quotes and anecdotes from other convention spaces and other conventions when ALA starts negotiating on this … not just business/high-tech, but a number of science fiction conventions are also starting offer wireless to their attendees, and I know they’re not asking their audience for an additional 30 bucks a day for access — especially since the con itself doesn’t see that money or get any benefit out of it.