Why Ohio?

By now, you're probably all excited about when we can all get together for our next national meeting and planning your trips to Cleveland and Columbus! I know I am looking forward to the next conference and convention. But based on the feedback we've received - both this year and in the past - some of your are asking, why Ohio again? After having the experience in planning and selecting these locations as the past VP of Programming, I can assure you that this is not an easy decision! So I wanted to share with you a little about what led us to these decisions.

If you don't know, I live in LA and would love to host you all a little closer to home! And we've heard your interest in going to new locations and getting the farther chapters more involved, so we made sure to look into these locations! First, we put out a request for interest for Leadership Conference 2010. Not very many chapters were interested, but after some discussion with a few chapters, we narrowed it down to a handful and looked into several on the west coast. For Convention 2011, we worked with Brian, the Triangle Executive Director, to select several fun locations - including two on the west coast and one in the southeast.

So why did we select the locations in Ohio?
1) Cost was too high on the west coast and other locations. Not only would it cost the majority of our actives and alumnae additional funds to travel that far, but the cost of lodging and food would increase registration and other incidental costs of the weekend. With the current economic situation, not only do we have to consider the budgets of our members but also the national operating budget as any business would.
2) Logistics become an issue in certain cities - everything from distance to airports to university requirements.
3) Attendance concerns - with high travel and registration costs, we were afraid that actives would be most affected and limited in travel ability. While the travel subsidy we offer is very helpful, we cannot pay for everyone to attend! Also, we hear from some alumnae that they would like to go to vacation locations, but we have not seen the kind of turnout in the past that demonstrates this is true

I don't want to lead anyone to thinking 'we'll never go anywhere outside of the northeast/midwest,' we are definitely heading in the right direction to do so. Here's how you can help:
1) If you want to host conference or convention in your city - let us know! Respond to our request or put together a proposal to let us know you're interested
2) Be creative! You know if your area is a high cost location, and you know it better than we do - so let us know if there are creative options to cut down costs that someone from out of town wouldn't think of.
3) Let us know your thoughts on where our future national meetings should be. Feel free to add comments to this post, or email anyone on national council!

We hope to see you at Case Western next summer, and hopefully at a city near you sometime in the future!

PRL, Nikki Yovanof
12th NC President
11th NC VP of Programming