At 09:30 AM 8/20/2003, Paul Edwards wrote:
>This should make the cost reasonable.

Yes, although in the past there have been problems not only scheduling the
use of HP's facility but also size, such that the IPROF gathering finally
had to
be moved off-site.  While size may not be an issue any longer, scheduling
always presents its challenges.  There were also issues about having to pay
for security/etc., which I'm sure would still exist.


>We just need the users in the MPE community to support the conference to be
>successful.

YES, this is the key.  The offerings would have to be such so as to provide
people
a compelling reason to attend along with the rational to demonstrate to a
company
that there is a justified business benefit, both short and longer term, in
their attending.
Given the current situation on the future for the HP3K and HP's withdrawal,
it's
doubtful that those involved in migrating to other platforms will have any
reasons to
justify attending to their business mgmt.  And conversely, it's not clear
that those
choosing to homestead would receive any additional benefit that is not already
available to them by the folks that have been marketing to this target
audience now
for over a year.

I feel that one has to develop something that gets over these hurdles for a
MPE-centric conference in order to generate sufficient momentum for this
undertaking to be viewed as a success by both organizers and attendees alike.
This is what we all face, in terms of putting this type of forum in order to
achieve a success.  It's not that much different than the challenge we're
faced
with at HPWorld in terms of the MPE track given the decline of MPE-centric
attendees.

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