Hey there folks :)
I have been following this thread ever since, guess its time to get involved here a bit. I'll try not make this too lengthy, so please excuse me for getting straight at the issues I see here:
1st - having a poll on the "where" is definetly not a good idea at this point IMO. Ask 16k people for a suggestion - what do you expect to get from this? At best, twenty cities that seem convenient to some, but chances to find one spot that seems most convenient would really be a surprise. So please, lets not have that. Nashville would be a central option, the west coast would be fine as well since Danalyse, PeterV and FishinMissio and some more people live in that part as far as I recollect.
From my experience with organizing the first meeting, I am a bit alert about the fact that not everyone who will get involved before such a meeting will actually show up and participate (...and help cover the cost...), so I'd definetly do it the other way around:
Propose a meeting with a given location, date and price and put that on offer, so anyone interested can jump in. I'd definetly ask for an ahead payment, too, for there is no other way to make sure no one will be left with a lot of cost in case some cant make it in the end. Sorry if that sounds like a downturn to some, I'll explain it in a bit.
2nd - what does it take to have such a meeting? It comes down to:
- a room suitable for the jamming activity (even better two rooms)
- a drumset, PA & monitors, a mixing console, mics and cables, optionally some light
- accomodation
- information on shuttle services, arrival, organization of amps and gear between the members, setting up a food concept (eating together is something that creates atmosphere, to leave it to anyone to "go out to eat" will split the group), negotiate individual needs...
Above may be organized at any place - what it comes down to is the question how much stuff can be supplied by or thru members at no or little cost, and how much of the above needs to be organized thru commercial suppliers.
For the sake of getting started somewhere, I have spent about half an hour googling around Nashville venues and found several options to investigate there, including official rehearsal studios, hostels, convention centers, airport shuttle services etc etc. It would be little effort to book all that for a given date in mid-2015, but the budget needed to do so would propably exceed 2.5k USD to be paid in advance - I have not contacted anyone for prices so far, but thats a fair guess I'd say.
I had been hoping someone located on US soil might propose something along the lines of
"Hey, I know this community center/church/school/youth hostel/whatever in this area that would definetly fit for such an occasion, and I could provide (part of) the needed gear from my contacts so that wont be at commercial prices",
doing it like this saved us A LOT of money when meeting in Urft this year - where the complete backline was supplied by me and a few friends and we benefitted from using a youth hostel in the country which was definetly the cheapest accomodation to book while the best venue to think of.
Since no such ideas / offers have been brought forward so far, I guess we are down to the more official & professional setup outlined above, which is also fine with me, but brings on diffrent figures budget wise.
So heres what I would propose at this point:
If there are no suggestions or offers from anyone,
I can go ahead and investigate a full-service-setups cost.
One would then promote the meeting and ask for definete bookings and (as soon as the critical number of potential participants has been reached) advance payments.
One might even do this via a crowdfunding platform. Either way, once there is the critical number of needed participants (which I'd say shouldn't be less than 12 people to reward the effort of organizing), I would go ahead and actually book the venue and supplies.
All I can say at this point is that this is not going to be nearly as cheap as the Urft meeting, I imagine the cost of accomodation, gear and venue might come down to something around 120 dollars a day per person - and this neither includes food nor anyones travelling cost. I'd like to explicitly ad that getting a paid flight myself would be nice, but is in no way a mandatory thing to me.
Hope this sounds reasonable, I surely dont want to "boss around" here, and as I have told Slim, everyone is open to do their thing and meet anytime they wish. I just wanted to offer my ideas on how I'd do this - I'd be glad to support anyone else who would like to go ahead with this, but please understand that I will only make use of the member information tools at my hands if there is a clear and realistic outline that can be presented to such a large audience without turning into a PR nightmare of some sort.
have a nice wikiend everyone!!
