Booking an entire small hotel sounds fantastic, but I'm wary. If what happened last year happens again, we could end up with many fewer people than expected and be stuck with still having to foot the bill.

That is wary-making, but if we're able to lock in a seriously low rate (the Hayes Valley Inn has a current online special running as low as $49 and an absolute maximum non-special rate of something like $99; I don't know what group rate we could get, but presumably it'd be somewhere in between), that might be enough to prevent a repeat of last year.

Though it's frustrating that it's all so much at the mercy of craxy airline price whimsies; we can exert some small (semi)control over the hotel costs, but the folks who will ultimately decide who can and can't make it are utterly beyond our control.

Deb, no. That's likely dial-up-ready phones.

wrt the Internet, I'm going in assuming (based on my own experience) the hotels will have 1 of 3 situations: 1) not at all 2) only in the lobby and/or conference rooms 3) everywhere. After NOLA, I don't see #1 or #2 leading to shiny happy Buffistas.

Debet, Nic just told me that "data ports" in every room means that the hotel is DSL-wired. Surely that's what we're looking at?

JZ, one of the deals on booking an entire small place is that we wouldn't be getting on a per-room basis; the likelihood is a flat fee for the time allotted.

And if there is in fact a nice PA-ready rehearsal room in SOMA or South Beach, how would people feel? I'm thinking four limos from hotel to rehearsal room and back again would do it....

charmed by "Betsy Goes To SF" doggie children's book thoughts Tep.

Debet, Nic just told me that "data ports" in every room means that the hotel is DSL-wired. Surely that's what we're looking at?

IME, it can go either way, with that language, so you'd have to ask them whether the data ports are dial-up or Ethernet. If they have no idea what you're talking about, it's probably dial-up.

Surely not everyone cares about having internet access in their room? For instance, I really don't.

I don't either -- to me, part of the fun of being on vacation is getting a break from the screen -- but, as others have said, it does seem to be dealbreaker-y for many people.

JZ, the Hayes Valley is a no: their TV/DVD room/hospitality suite only holds ten people and they aren't wired for internet. Alas.

There was much grumbling in New Orleans.

I think the reason that no internet access was such a common complaint this year is that it had been promised, and then turned out not to exist. If we knew in advance that the hotel wouldn't have wireless (or would only have dial-up, etc etc), I think we could deal with it.

Ah, darn, Deb, that's a shame. Still, it looks like there are a lot of other possibilities floating around.