Hi Clint. Sorry but I respectfully don't agree with your cruise opinion. I have not been an AMSAT member for more than 15 years. I have never been to a symposium. However we just booked the trip. We are so excited that this years event will be on a ship. In fact my wife even booked it before I got home from work today. One of our business vendors held a conference on a similar ship. Everyone who attended loved it.
Obviously since I have been out of the loop for so many years, I don't know about the organizations financial status. Wether they are loaded or not, I don't see the cruise effecting that.
In my opinion wether or not there is the same size of crowd, it will be a great experience that everyone will enjoy. In this case they just gained one person who hadn't been there before.
Have a great night, Chad/kg0mw
On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 10:14 PM, Clint Bradford clintbradford@mac.com wrote:
Now THERE'S a guaranteed manner in which to increase attendance: add a cruise cost to air fare.
You gotta be kidding.
This makes your online pleas for money raising on behalf of AMSAT-NA for satellite projects seem trivial and unnecessary: AMSAT must be loaded if they think this is going to enhance their stature and bank account.
This makes me wonder what the true desire is of AMSAT-NA. If it is, indeed, to "disseminate info about and build birds," then the best method available is remote, live, videocasts from presenters. That would cost the presenter NOTHING in transportation costs. It would involve EVERY CONTINENT on the planet. And it would allow the largest possible audiences to "attend." Minimal charge for password access to whatever session one wanted to see ... or a conference package fee ... allow that access to be shown to a classroom or audience ... those fees are TOTAL PROFIT to AMSAT (unless honorariums are paid to some presenters).
Overhead costs to AMSAT-NA? Virtually nothing. Largest attendance ever of any AMSAT show in history? Guaranteed.
Unless the same minds who thought up "let's take a cruise" are in charge of it ... only then could someone mess up so simple a concept to bring educational sessions to the largest audience.
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