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News – New York Conference

The registration forms aren’t out yet. Not all the speakers are confirmed yet. But, for those that want to get a jump start on their plans for the 2008 HPS Network Family Conference, here’s a little information to help you get started.

As I’ve blogged before, the dates of the conference had to be moved this year because the hotel is undergoing renovations. The conference will be March 28-30, 2008.

The hotel room block is open if you want to go ahead and reserve your room. When the conference was in February, there weren’t a lot of groups just jumping up and down to meet in the cold of New York and the hotel has traditionally been able to be very flexible with us about rooms. In March, however, the demand for rooms is a bit greater. We had to sign a hotel contract that has something called an “attrition clause.” It’s pretty common practice, but it means that if we put, for example, 100 rooms in the room block, and our members only book 70 of them, then we’ve got to pay for the other 30 rooms if the hotel doesn’t rent them. So, we low balled our estimate and went with the same number of rooms we used last year, even though the conference typically grows 20 percent a year.

If members make their room reservations early, then we can perhaps adjust a bit.

The room rate this year is $141 a night. To make a reservation, contact the Long Island Marriott at: 1-516-794-3800. Tell them you’re with the HPS Network and need to book with the HPS Network rate.

Also, this year the conference registration fees are going up. It just isn’t avoidable. The registration fees will be $60 per adult and $30 per child. Families with more than two children will pay $60 for all children.

Most of us are tight on cash, and any rise in the price is not great news. However, having worked behind-the-scenes on this conference I can tell you that $60 per person doesn’t even begin to cover costs if we charged attendees actual costs. The registration fee includes meals from Friday night to Sunday lunch (if you show up at meal times). It also includes snacks in the hospitality suite. And, it includes access to all the conference public sessions and all the speakers and the party on Saturday night. HPS Network fundraisers help to offset the costs as much as possible. (Thanks to all of our fundraisers out there!)

We’ll be getting the registration forms out sometime after the first of the year.

I just wanted to give you guys a head’s up!

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