It's About Time!

Welcome to your January 2007 edition of the PlanetChristmas newsletter! It is published almost every month and covers relative topics for the Christmas decorating enthusiast.

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Our Worldwide 2007 Gathering: A Pre-Review

Putting on an event like PLUS (PlanetChristmas Lights Up Symposium) is a huge undertaking. Bringing together people from around the world in August to talk about Christmas is a challenge like few others. PLUS set the expectation bar high in 2003 and even higher in 2005. There's nothing like a little pressure to make PLUS2007 the best yet.

Within a few days after PLUS2005 was history, many of the original Steering Committee members had volunteered to be part of 2007. How could I turn that down? A couple of months later I officially began work on PLUS2007 with the new (yet old) Steering Committee. One of the first things the group did was analyze all the user feedback and surveys taken at PLUS2005. We then looked at the typical attendee and discussed how we could make their next PLUS experience better.

The Steering Committee started to discuss the location of the next PLUS. We learned from PLUS2003 that having the event at a conference center in a business park proved a hardship on family members not interested in going to a Christmas event. PLUS2005 put us much closer to family attractions, but the traffic was almost unbearable at times. We knew we could do better.

It was determined the event needed 18,000 to 24,000 square feet of indoor convention space for the vendor area and classrooms. We desired an indoor banquet, on-premise or nearby reasonably priced hotel rooms, located in a community with plenty of family entertainment and dining, within an hour of an airport and hopefully in an area with Christmas shops.

I went as far as to visually map all the PLUS 2005 registrants to see if there was a central mass. I also did the same with the entire PlanetChristmas chatroom database (at least those people with a real location in their profile). It's amazing what you can do with Google maps. Our central point ended up somewhere between St. Louis and Louisville.

Now that the Steering Committee knew what they were looking for, I engaged Conferon meeting planners to help find a location. They specialize in events like PLUS and my brother happens to work for them. After several weeks, their recommendations included Hot Springs, St. Louis, Louisville, Kansas City, Gatlinburg, Chicago, San Antonio, Tallahassee and San Diego. RFP's were sent and the responses analyzed. I won't relive the details of each site, but the Gatlinburg Convention Center in Tennessee ended up winning because of its new facility, cheap hotel rooms, family atmosphere, within walking distance to restaurants, shops and entertainment, cool mountain temperature and finally Christmas shops in nearby Pigeon Forge. An unexpected bonus was Santa's Land amusement park just a few miles away.

I went to Gatlinburg to scout out the venue. The convention center is in the center of town and right on the main street. I parked the car at the hotel and never got back in until the next day when it was time to leave. You could walk everywhere and not worry about the traffic. The town is located literally at the foot of the Great Smokey Mountains (in fact the town stops at the edge of the national park) and the temperature is a few degrees cooler because of the elevation, which makes a difference in August. Gatlinburg is eight miles from where PLUS2005 was held in Pigeon Forge, and still in Tennessee, but that's where the similarity ends. Where Pigeon forge was spread out and traffic-challenged, Pigeon Forge is dense and walkable. I'm convinced this is the best PLUS location ever.

Registration pricing of PLUS2007 was discussed at length. Our costs of producing the event have increased because of the larger space requirements. We wanted to keep vendor fees low so more could attend and they could offer great deals to PLUS attendees. Finally, any money left over was to be dedicated to fund PlanetChristmas activities and ongoing expenses. In other words, PLUS was never designed to make anyone rich. After much discussion, we factored in the lower costs of food and lodging in the area and settled on the $295 list price for the three day event with significant discounts for registering early. We also left in place our Patron level for those that wanted some special perks and help fund PlanetChristmas activities a little more.

We're handling education registration like the old days. All classes are open and no registration is required, though we'll close the room doors when all the seats are filled. We will also be having hands-on labs to gain real experience in a subject. There can be up to five simultaneous classes conducted and we're tackling some new subjects this year.

The Steering Committee is also providing "Family Fun" activities to help the non-PLUS attendees that might get bored. We'll also be helping coordinate more evening activities.

The banquet is already shaping up to be the best ever. The keynote speaker will be Mary Edsey, author of a book about Christmas displays. She is a fountain of information and a delight to talk with. Since the event will be indoors at the convention center, no one will have a bad seat. I've been sworn to secrecy concerning the post meal entertainment.

We've already had more vendors commit to PLUS2007 than any event in the past. Since the Gatlinburg Convention center is on the main thoroughfare, we also expect a lot of street traffic to flow through the vendor area. This will allow the vendors to offer even more PLUS attendee special deals.

As I write this, there's still six months until PLUS2007. Registration numbers are looking good with some people coming from as far away as Australia. PLUS is definitely a worldwide event where the experts and the newbies are gathering to learn from the best.

I'll see ya there!

p.s. find all the latest PLUS2007 details at http://www.plus2007.com.

PlanetChristmas Tip of the Month

I hope you have your 2006 disassembled and inside. Before you totally forget what the display was like, write down your thoughts including the good, the bad and the ugly. Create a file called Christmas Display 2007 and drop your 2006 thoughts in the folder. When you start working on the 2007 display, read your 2006 list to see how to make your display even better!

What's New at PlanetChristmas?

Submit pictures of your 2006 Christmas display and they'll end up in the PlanetChristmas Showing Off section of the website. It never fails, the next year video production companies will find those pictures and some homes end up on TV shows. Here's your chance for those 15 minutes of fame!

Just in you didn't read the feature story, PLUS2007 is in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, August 2-4, 2007. The www.PLUS2007.com website is now online and accepting registrations for the event. Here's a hint: the registration price goes up soon, so register now and save some money!

If you attended either of our major PlanetChristmas Lights Up Symposium (PLUS) events, you know a great time is in store. There is plenty being taught by the experts, but you also discover so much more sharing information with other enthusiasts and also talking directly to our vendors. The key to success for PLUS2007 is the continued growth of the PlanetChristmas community.

Talking about a gold mine of information, this is the place! If you haven't found it yet, go to http://www.planetchristmas.com/talk.htm. We've recently added more forums and made it a little easier to get around. Once you're a member, feel free to change the look and feel of the chatroom by going to "My Account/Preferences/Board Theme." Don't forget to update your profile so others can learn about your display. Also remember the part of the chatroom you can see when not logged in is indexed by the Internet search engines, but once you're a registered member, many new forums open up but are invisible to the search engines. PlanetChristmas believes strongly in protecting your privacy.

The PlanetChristmas radio station is now on-line and available to anyone with a fast Internet connection to tap into. Christmas music 24x7... even in the middle of Winter How can you go wrong? Find the retails at http://www.planetchristmas.com/PCRadio2006.htm

We've added a dedicated classified ads website at http://classifieds.planetchristmas.com. There are no fees for the PlanetChristmas community.

Just start at http://www.planetchristmas.com/talk.htm if you want to instant message with others in the PlanetChristmas community. The user interface has recently changed so it's much easier to get around.

Newsletter Suggestion?

Have a suggestion for a main topic or want to write an article for a future PlanetChristmas newsletter? Send me an email: csmith@planetchristmas.com If you know someone that really should subscribe to your newsletter, send them to http://planetchristmas.com/lists/?p=subscribe

Next time: look forward to more Christmas decorating tips.

Chuck Smith of PlanetChristmas