[clarke68]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voltron I still like the idea of a main room, rather than solely the "big show style" spread out in little rooms, but having one or more extra rooms like the one in SJ last summer can work well. It was not a library in there at any time. People were boisterous but respectable, and mainly there were just fewer people in one space.

Might work well to have a large room for the vendors, and then a series of medium-sized rooms for members, maybe organized in some way (type of gear, gear value, etc.), maybe not. The medium rooms could run just like a normal meet, but less bodies in each space would keep the volume down a bit.

That said, I'd love to see a couple ultra-quiet rooms (regular hotel rooms would be fine) where we could set up some double-blind or ABX listening tests as excellent/controlled/scientific as we know how.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voltron if the next International Meet is in the Bay Area (SF or SJ) then I intend to volunteer on organizing, planning and/or working it.

I second the nomination for the SF Bay Area to host next year's International Meet, and I'll help (to the limits of my skill set!).

 

[mbriant]

I found the one big room setup and all the hustle and bustle it created, added to the energy and excitement of the show. Also, the long rows of rectangular tables helped keep the extension and power cords neat, tidy, and out of the way ... something perhaps not so easy to do with round tables.

Back when I used to attend the CES, I always found the high end private hotel room displays (and especially the hallways leading to them) claustrophobic and uninviting....and those rooms always had the beds removed. There were often bottlenecks caused by crowds of people trying to get into certain rooms to hear the most popular setups, with lots of noise still coming into the rooms from the hallways. I can't imagine having a steady stream of people piling in and out of those Ramada (or any other) hotel rooms, especially with beds and everyone's luggage, shipping boxes, etc., still in them.

 

[The_Duke_Of_Eli]

Even though I wasn't there I beleive that the two seperate days idea is a good and bad thing. It's good because it gives the vendors alot of attention, but at the same time may turn people off who want to try general member's gear as well. It is a large issue though if you lose vendor support if there isn't enough interest or if the companies don't think it's worth their money to send some representatives and gear down and potentially lose money. For the noise problem I'd recommend sound isolation "booths" with insulated foam that people can sit inside and enjoy as if it was their own private room. Impractical? Yes. Weird? Yes. Would it be freaking cool? Yes.

 

[Naris]

I agree with the having a day just for vendors (with some well-equipped members loaning out equipment to help them bring out the best in their equipment) and another day just for members (and vendors who want to participate as members).

Also agree that quiet is virtually impossible at a meet. While having separate hotel rooms where you could do quiet listening would be nice, I'm inclined to agree with mbriant about how claustrophobic they would be. Not to mention there would be popular rooms always packed with people. Someone said a cone of silence earlier... and while I'm fairly sure that was a D&D joke... could white noise generators maybe dampen ambient noise enough for accurate listening? Or is that just a stupid idea?

I also think that maybe next year (since we're probably going to need a bigger and more expensive venue) admission fees should be charged. Not a lot... just enough that they break even before donations from members. Plus if they have a raffle again you just know people are going to donate a lot in terms of buying tickets.

Finally... while the dinner was good (very good... or maybe college food is just very bad...), it wasn't necessary in NYC. I mean, there are restaurants up to the wazoo over there. Plus it probably cost quite a bit to feed 300 or so people.

EDIT: Also, Duke's idea about sound isolation booths sounds really cool.

 

[ricksome]

I was not at the meet because of my work schedule. I do live on the East Coast (Baltimore, Maryland area). If "some official" (if there is one) wants to have the International Meet in this area, I will volunteer my time.

So who exactly makes the decision where to have the Meet and how do you become an International Meet official?

I was at the College Park Meet in March at Thrice's house. There was 10 - 15 people in his house while I was there. It was noisy and I did not get any serious time in with the equipment. But that was alright. I met some nice folks and learned a thing or two. I would think The International Meet was like that on steroids. Correct me if I'm wrong and someone answer my question in the paragraph above, PLEASE!

Thrice: thanx once again for hosting the meet...Rick

 

[Wmcmanus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mbriant Back when I used to attend the CES, I always found the high end private hotel room displays (and especially the hallways leading to them) claustrophobic and uninviting....and those rooms always had the beds removed. There were often bottlenecks caused by crowds of people trying to get into certain rooms to hear the most popular setups, with lots of noise still coming into the rooms from the hallways. I can't imagine having a steady stream of people piling in and out of those Ramada (or any other) hotel rooms, especially with beds and everyone's luggage, shipping boxes, etc., still in them.

I agree that it wouldn't work unless the beds were removed. At the CES (and similar 'big') shows, 2 channel audio is the main attraction so the beds need to be removed to create space for people to sit and to allow the speakers to really open up. With headphone listening, this isn't so critical, but there would need to be enough listening stations in each room to ensure that there aren't 20 people standing around chatting while one or two people try to listen.

I agree that the big room is a lot of fun in terms of meeting and greeting, but it's totally useless in terms of a listening environment.

 

[coolshot]

ultility carts!

set your rig on your very own ultility cart. It goes where you go. The big room with the vendors where you can put your rig on display. When someone wants to really check out your rig, well well lets wheel it to the quiet room. Then after we can wheel it back out for a discussion.

 

[thrice]

I like the idea of vendors and members at the same time and even in the same space. I feel that helped with the sense of community you felt when you walked in. The other issue with multiple rooms is security...not that it couldn't be dealt with, but it becomes a more complex issue. Perhaps using the room differently would work. A lot of these places (including the hotel in NY) have rooms that can be divided into sections. A partition could be drawn half way deliniating a member side of the room from a vendor side. Later we can all arm ourselves with foamies and fling them at each other in a mock member/vendor battle.

I also think spliting up the vendors on one day and members on the other is tough since some folks might be coming from far away and want to set up their rig both days...hey they lugged it far enough right? Of course the opposite might be true as well.

Perhaps instead of organizing member gear on tables some sort of booth arrangement is possible....portable partitions (similar to cubicles) could offer some isolation from the larger meet and still keep an open and inviting feel. It might be easier for traffic as well.

The panel discussion was great and informative...I could've listened for at least another hour to those guys. Certainly there are more questions that could've been asked as well. I did feel that the meet was cut off by the discussion though. What if a panel discussion was held at the beginning...maybe Friday night and then the rest of the weekend was meet time. Or the discussion could be held in another room and those who wanted to attend could, but if you weren't interested you could stay at the meet listening to gear. That model might open it up to other panels as well....headphone makers in the morning, amp builders later, cable makers at another time...etc.

The banquet was nice and food is an issue at something like this. Location may dictate how food is handled more than anything. This location had restaurants right on the same drag as the hotel, but some convention centers have food courts and other hotels aren't near much. I think coming up with a way for a large meal to not interrupt the meet space would be good. We could all still break for the meal at the same time...it was nice all of us sitting down together to eat like that (my mother would laugh if she read that from me).

I think that the NY meet organizers were wise to require some sort of registration and limit the people who could enter the meet to those who had reserved a place ahead of time. A small registration fee is certainly acceptable as well. The raffle was great and a great way to help raise money as well.

It would certainly be nice to have a DIY area or some sort of DIY aspect to the meet as well. Maybe even some workshops...etc. based around certain amps or aspects of amp design/build techniques....and so forth.

With that in mind the idea of hourly demos/presentations/workshops/classes comes to mind. What to hear different power cords....well from 12-1 in the side room there will be a few setups with power cords you can swap out...or interconnects and so forth. A vendor could take an hour to present new products...anything really.

We should also invite Bose...for the irony.

Oh yes and event T-shirts...the profits could go to the meet...or even towards next year's meet.

Oh yeah and the girls with the signs...yeah that's good too.

 

[taylor]

One problem I noticed with the manufacturers - Most were using Ipods as sources, and the tracks varied from manufacturer to manufacturer and even headphone to headphone.

Perhaps some of the wise and experienced members could make a list of 12-15 tracks that are well recorded and would make good tracks to gauge the performance of headphones on, then give this list to the manufacturers, and have them all put it on their stuff. They wouldn't be limited to just that music, but it would allow some more continuity and better comparison between manufacturers. I don't know how the copyright laws are, but maybe even put those tracks on a CD and lend it out to people for the day. Even reccomend that people with access to those tracks or an online music store put together their own demo CDs to use.

I thought it was great that I brought my own CDs, but at a lot of the PC-as-source tables there was a song or two that I really would have wanted to try on the rig and couldn't. Even with individual CDPs, it got tiresome having to switch CDs so often. In order to make sure everyone got a chance, I only listened to maybe a minute of each album I brought, I spent as much time swapping CDs as I did listening. Of course, I should have made a demo CD, but I didn't plan that far ahead. I threw together my rig at six AM, day of meet.

Just thinking out loud here...

 

[granodemostasa]

i'm not sure why it seems as if hotel rooms are a given.... there are a numbe of buildings in SF and Berkeley that could host such an event very well (ie, they have large ball rooms and many small rooms).... but i have a number of questions:
1. How many people would be needed to organize the national meet?
2. how much money could be raised in order to pay for the location?

 

[tyrion]

I think Waynes idea is a good one. This is a subject that has come up before discussing ways to change up the Florida meets. I for one, found the vendors presence to be distracting but certainly not unappreciated. I am not saying not to include the vendors, I just did not spend much time there as there was so much gear around and so many people I wanted to speak to. I would like to see a day of hotel/quiet rooms and a second day which would be a more traditional meet set up which tends to be more relaxed and social. The vendors could each have their own rooms. This would allow the vendors to have their gear heard in more optimal conditions and be able to deal with the individual attendees without all the distractions. I think a suite hotel would provide the best venue for this type of meet. I also feel that a hotel that is not a location for weddings would provide a less expensive venue. I would look for a business oriented hotel where businesses hold meetings. The question would they have meeting rooms big enough to host the entire group. We held a meet at a hotel in Tampa that had 2 nice sized rooms next to each other. I think if that hotel had one more large room, we may have been able to fit the attendees (absent vendors).

 

[gloco]

I've been reading some great ideas from members posted in this thread, I thought I'd chime in my .02.

I did not attend the NY International meet mostly because I moved into a new apartment a few weeks ago. Also, the thought of sitting there and babysitting my gear was another factor in why I decided to bow out of it. The thought of my rig being man-handled was not a pleasant thought and after reading that some expensive cans were dropped on the floor made me wince in horror.

The hotel room idea from Wayne is a good one, but it would force people to stay in their room and watch their gear and not have the chance to demo other people's gear. Besides the mini-meets we see pop up around NYC nowadays thanks to people like Jahn and the gang, the idea of having a 25 person NY meet is gone and that may cause some people to re-think how to setup meets in the future. That's not to say the Intl meet wasn't a success, by all account it seems to have been huge success, but the constant complaints about noise levels and members missing out on auditioning gear goes against (at least partially) what these meetings are for.

Will we have a standard NY meet later this year? I'll be surprised to see one pop up since Grado Labs wont be able for a while, based on previous comments I've read. Maybe we should look into renting a large hall in Manhattan or Brooklyn for the next large NYC meet (thinking 50-100 people).
We could all chip in on renting the hall for a day or two and lock up for lunch and dinner. If memory serves me correctly, wasn't this done last year?

As for mini-meets: I have the green light from my girlfriend, who lives with me, to hold a mini meet in our apartment, so I'll be announcing one in the next month or two (probably mid-July). That should be exciting if it pans out, but I wish I lived in a bigger apartment so I could invite more people and have a Grado Labs-style meet. If this mini-meet is successful, I'll be doing them frequently since I'd like to hear some different rigs as well. Boy, I haven't been to a meet since November 2003 and I miss them.

(wishful thinking) If only we could mix it up with the Stereophile show they hold every year (/wishful thinking).

 

[rsaavedra]

Ok here's a wild thought. How about also offering audiology tests during a meet? This could probably be arranged with a hospital or some health service, a small fee could be charged. In general the service would require a special sound proof sort of booth, which I guess that hospital / health service would need to move to the meet location. So definitely some sort of payment would be required to provide this.

 

[Sovkiller]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wmcmanus The only way to resolve the noise issue, IMO, would be to go to the "big show" format where all of the member setups would be operated out of hotel rooms. This way they could be "open" when they wanted to be and if they didn't have anyone to watch the room, they could lock the door and leave a note about when they were coming back. Ideally, we could get one or two floors of contiguous rooms such that members could walk up and down the hallways to check out room after room. For this to work there would have to be considerable room sharing, such that 5 or 6 members would be assigned to one room (other than bozebuttons of course!). At least one of the beds in the room would need to be knocked down and stored. Anyone who has been to one of the major audio shows will know what I'm talking about. It would give local members a chance to set up a speaker rig as well if they so desire.

Wayne don't forget a couple of strippers in each room, just to keep an eye on the gear, you know...

I pormise to bring a couple of long legs italian girls, just for you to enjoy the RP1000...And I want to be near Ultrasone again...LOL...

 

[bozebuttons]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gloco Will we have a standard NY meet later this year? I'll be surprised to see one pop up since Grado Labs wont be able for a while, based on previous comments I've read. Maybe we should look into renting a large hall in Manhattan or Brooklyn for the next large NYC meet (thinking 50-100 people). We could all chip in on renting the hall for a day or two and lock up for lunch and dinner. If memory serves me correctly, wasn't this done last year?

Should have a fall meet in NOV, Possibly in the american legion hall we had the june meet last year on Long Island.