For better or worse, we depend on the staff and volunteers to reflect the opinions of the membership at large; doing it any other way would turn this into a complete democracy, and that would keep us from getting anything done in a timely manner.

The problem of moving some of the programming (and I include Artists' Alley and the Art Show in this, even though they're a separate department) into the Marriott is a fairly complicated one. I don't know if the staff is against the idea of two hotels so much as they're concerned about the additional work and the possible "orphan" status of whoever/whatever gets moved over there. It would certainly make things a lot more complicated, but I think we need to at least thrash out the question with all the pros and cons discussed rather than just rejecting it out of hand. I'm not the chairman next year, so it's really stuckintraffik's decision.