By: David Grindle, USITT Executive Director
Thank you. We asked and you shared.
In the past few months, we’ve asked you your thoughts and opinions on a variety of topics. From rating sessions to what you are looking for in Conference locations, you’ve been willing to share your views.
So, what have we learned? From the session ratings and comments, we’ve learned that our speakers need to use their microphones, no matter how loud they think they may speak.
Cost is the number one driver when deciding if you can attend the Conference.
When asked if we should go in rotation, or if we should go long years between cities, you were evenly split.
And, we now have the data to confirm what we’ve always long “known,” the timing of the Conference is right where people want it.
All of this data helps us put together our proposal for future Conference sites. Your input is valuable as we can include the statistics in our proposals. When people see that cost, access of variably priced food, and things like that are important to an overwhelming percentage of our attendees, they know we are serious.
So where we will go? We offer the opportunity to a large number of cities in hopes that we can find space options. From there we try to build a rotation and provide a spread across the nation, as best as possible.
We do try to find places that don’t have challenging political climates, but we are booking 5 or more years out. So things can change between signing and us showing up for a conference. Please understand that none of these challenges are ignored and the volunteer and staff leadership are both on the lookout for challenges that might come up.
In the end, your point of view matters and the data you’ve offered gives us something more than just our observations to share when discussing how “our people” like their Conferences.
