[J3] (SC22WG5.6246) 2022 WG5 meeting

[Keith Bierman]

I haven't been monitoring the venue discussion closely; but perhaps
revisiting how we got to Las Vegas to begin with may be of historical
interest.

For the first several decades, the committee always had a local host, the
venue changing each meeting. Reasonable effort to balance East, West and
Central. I rewife call it getting increasingly difficult to find hosts
(early 90's). At a meeting in San Diego (if memory serves; I'm morally
certain that  subgroup was walking back from  dinner at a chinese
restaurant), I recall WaltB, Miles Ellis, Jean Martin, JerryW, myself and
some others were walking back and discussing the difficulty in finding
hosts. I had recently attended a PCF meeting, and noted that they had
adopted an interesting scheme  of always meeting in Chicago, meeting in a
hotel by the airport and flying in/out on overlapping tickets (so
discounted without a saturday night stay). Walt's wife was a travel agent,
and after some discussion it was suggested that Las Vegas had cheap flights
AND cheap hotel rooms. Once back in session, we agreed to give it a shot,
and Walt's wife found us very cheap rooms at "Arizona Charlies".  Note that
at that time, the committee generally needed at least one (sometimes more
than 1) printer and at least one shared computer (not everyone was expected
to be able to bring a laptop).

Arizona Charlies was  truly horrible. Tobacco smoke everywhere, dim
lighting, in-house casino (unlike the strip, where such places are brightly
lit to erase day/night, AC was perpetually in twilight). At the time, it
was the most deplorable venue I'd ever attended a meeting at.

But people appreciated the discounted airfares and room rates (vs. many of
our other venues) and Mallory North was tasked with trying to find us a
less deplorable hotel, and he was able to find us a very nice place at
attractive rates; so the Committee decided to give Vegas a second shot ...
and the rest is history.

There was always a tension between wanting to go somewhere (anywhere) else
for variety and (for us vendors) leveraging the trip for customer visits
and such versus the consistently cheap and "reliable" (we cached a printer
and if memory serves, a computer local to LV for several years) facilities.

Personally, I was amazed that Las Vegas stuck; when I first floated the
idea, I figured we'd do it for a year or so and then finances would open up
and local hosts would be forthcoming again and we'd resume the historic
peripatetic meeting schedule.

My Management at the time rather liked the fairly consistent (and low)
pricing; but it wasn't compelling to them (Sun had adequate funding for
Standards). I recall some other Committee members at the time really needed
the consistent and low pricing (and some were able to drive rather than fly
when that worked out better for them financially).

Obviously, the Committee needs to work out what works best now.
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