Words are inadequate

I'm, myself, not too hopeful about next year, either. There's serious staff burnout, and a disgusting lack of places to actually hold a con in-town. Let me run it down for you, real quick.

Here're the places with at least a moderate amount of function space (not just one room):
The Ramada - barely in town at all, crappy location, facility's under new management, so it might not suck near so much any more...hopefully.

The Holiday Inn University - Blacksburg - Well, it was a nice facility last year, but now they want 4.5 times (yes!) what they asked for last year, and we wouldn't even be able to get the suite, since some of the new owners live there now. And I'm under the impression they'd be leery, if they allowed it at all, of moving furniture to clear room space.

The Inn at Virginia Tech - Gorgeous facility, hideously expensive, and a completely wonky billing setup (per head per room. Great for business cons, not for us). nius got a quote from them when we were planning for TCon 23, the lowest they could come up with was $30,000. Plus, the rooms there are at least as pricey as the HI, minimum price I've seen is $120/night during the off season (and you may have noticed, but March is pretty crowded, these days).

On-Campus - You know why this is a suboptimal option. Space is free, but the facilities aren't that great and they're not open 24 hours.


There, that's it. Four options that are actually local to Blacksburg. Cburg hotels aren't any better, they all max out at one, maybe two 'function' rooms, which really just isn't enough, the way we're expected to do things. Maybe, if we're real lucky, the new Courtyard at Marriot that just went up might be a viable option. It wasn't available for this year. I don't know what its prices would be. Hell, I still don't really know where it is.

So there, see why things are just fucked up this year? Why they'll probably stay fucked up? There's no real market in this town for a proper convention facility, as everything convention-like happens on campus, and for limited hours. Convention space is really only available in Roanoke, and that's not local. Hell, then it's just ShevaCon.