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October 2006 From the President's Desk: Conference Questions

by Jack El-Hai

ASJA's annual conference is one of our most important programs. It gives members and nonmembers valuable information about freelancing and publishing, introduces us to a smart pool of potential members, carries our organization's name to editors and agents, and connects us all face-to-face. Just as important as all of these virtues, the conference also makes ASJA a good chunk of change. During the past five years, it has consistently added $40,000 to $50,000 to our bottom line.

The good news is that our 2006 conference, held last April, continued the event's illustrious successes. Attendance was close to capacity, and there was a healthy increase in the number of members who registered to participate.

The bad news is that the 2006 conference earned less than usual, something under $30,000. How could the earnings drop if attendance remained high? There are two answers to this excellent question, and both suggest that ASJA should perhaps approach the conference in a new way.

One reason why the earnings of the conference fell is that a greater percentage of members attended. A lot of them were drawn by the tempting line-up of editors and agents available for Personal Pitch sessions. ASJA members pay less to register than do nonmembers, so the income dropped.

At the same time, our expenses were higher. Nearly all of the price increase went into your mouths. The cost of our two luncheons and receptions rose sharply. The meals themselves were more expensive, and we also offered free lunches to the many editors and agents who came to participate in the Personal Pitch sessions on Members Day. Those complementary lunches, we believed, would help us attract better people for members to meet with.

So lower receipts and higher expenses resulted in smaller earnings. Do not misunderstand me-the 2006 conference was by no means a financial disaster and ASJA is in great fiscal health. By pre-2002 standards, this conference was a big moneymaker. But since 2002, we have grown accustomed to staging conferences that bring in more money.

Over the summer I appointed a special committee of the Board to examine the future of the conference. Although nothing seems seriously wrong with our conference as it currently stands, the expenses of the event are only going to rise higher if we make no changes, and this dip in earnings should serve as a signal for us to brainstorm new ways of meeting our conference goals. Can we continue to give members all of the benefits the conference brings and bring in the financial support we've come to expect from it? I think we can, and we might be able to even improve what the conference does for ASJA.

Should we raise the registration fees? They're quite reasonable now. How much would we have to raise them to attain our old standards of earnings?

More importantly, is there some other format for the conference, or new kind of venue, that could produce desirable changes? ASJA has held its conferences in New York City hotels for as long as I can remember. To attract the rich group of editors and agents we need for our panels, workshops, and other conference events, it is hard to imagine another city that would serve as well as New York. But meeting in a hotel, regardless of the location, imposes limitations on us. For our conference, we need the combination of many large breakout rooms for panel and workshop sessions, and a very large ballroom for our luncheons. We could ditch the luncheons, but those meals give the hotels most of their profit, and few establishments would want to host a conference without a lunch unless they could replace the lost money in some other way.

Several Board members have suggested partnering with an educational institution, maybe a journalism school, to hold the conference. We could use their facilities and perhaps benefit from the partnership beyond the conference. The committee will check into that possibility.

By the way, our 2007 conference is already set for the Grand Hyatt Hotel on April 19-21. There is no changing that now. But if you would like to make suggestions for the way we operate our conferences in 2008 and beyond, please send them to me and I will forward them to the committee. We all want ASJA's annual conference to continue adding to our careers and to ASJA's financial health.

Jack El-Hai of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is president of ASJA. E-mail the president through www.asja.org/contact.php.