> Oh yes! And I *do* hope there will be some enlightenment, and not just > heat..... it's easy to spend all the time nitpicking over some > 10.000-dollar line item, when the smallest change needed to get the > situation fixed runs into the hundreds of thousands..... and i agree. which is why i'd like to see some apples-to-apples comparisons to answer questions like this: how much is the food subsidy really costing us? could we simply cover the gap by bumping the registration cost by another $100/meeting? (which is the conclusion i come to after reading pekka's email) what kind of a deal can we get if we do a multi-year contract with a hotel in the "off" season? i.e., minneapolis in january, dallas in july. does the cost of having meetings outside the continental us mean that we should be charging a significantly higher attendence fee when we have meetings there? or, should we simply have fewer of them outside the continental us? i think that each of these three things have implications in the six figures... /mtr ps: and i still favor cutting back access to basic connectivity and nothing more.