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From: Wes Boyd <boydwe_at_dmci.net> subject: [Paddlewise] Symposium rant Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 14:29:59 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:09 PDT

After talking the Western Michigan Symposium up in posts earlier this week,
I was really disappointed to get the flyer for the thing in the mail.
Either they've raised the prices or I didn't remember how bad they were
from last year. $80.00 early registration, $160 for family, $100 for late
registration, adult day registration $50.00. Meals work out to just under
$20 per day. 

I don't have the figures for the current or last year's Great Lakes
Symposium, but I did find the 1998 flyer, and the registration was like $70
and $85, and I'm sure they've gone up since then. You also pay through the
nose for very overcrowded camping, but that goes to the village and not to
the organizers, and no meals are provided.

Do sea kayak symposiums everywhere cost like this? Where do these people
get off charging these kind of rates? "Well, we have to do it to break
even," I'm sure someone will say quickly. "It costs money to bring in the
speakers, and stuff." Bull. You look at other stuff, and you can see that
either the events are financially mismanaged and organizationally
incompetent, or it's sheer Gouging -- with a capital "G" which rhymes with
"P" which stands for RIP-OFF.

Cases in point:

Canoecopia is in two weeks -- the fee is $5 at the door, $10 for the
weekend. They have a better list of speakers than either of the two
symposiums mentioned above, and that goes with the door fee.

Last spring there was a big whitewater festival down in West Virgina or
North Carolina or somewhere -- I think it was Gauleyfest, although I'm not
sure (I didn't go), but the talk on RBP was that the fee was $10 -- and
that included camping and a ticket for a free beer at the beer tent.

I've not organized a kayak event, but I've been involved in the
organization of a lot of hiking events. Last year, the North Country Trail
annual meeting was a flat $25 for four days. Meals were $10 and $15, and
there was all you could eat and then some. It was a great meeting, we had
some great speakers, including the editor of "Backpacker" magazine, and I
was a little upset that we hadn't been able to keep the costs down to what
they usually are.

So where do these people get off charging eighty bucks for a three day
weekend? In the case of the Western Michigan Symposium, I'll bet sixteen to
twenty grand is the take on gate fees alone. Granted, some of that has to
go to the site, and some of it has to go to liability, and some of it has
to go for tags to keep everybody honest, and some of it has to go for
speakers. While it's wonderfully instructive -- if not humiliating -- to
watch Doug VanDoren roll a kayak every way but endwise, it's got to be a
heck of a trip for him to drive from Grand Rapids to Blue Lake, maybe forty
miles. They are bringing in Ken Fink from Maine, which is clearly going to
cost a few hundred, but out of a $20,000 budget, it's not going to be
painful for them to lay out a grand to do it, and I'll bet they don't spend
that much.

Or, take the Great Lakes Symposium. This is a much bigger event; I'll bet
the gross is well over $50,000. Bigger names are there, Derek Hutchinson,
Nigel Dennis. Other expenses are minimal, maybe a few bucks to the village
for extra trash pickup, portajohn rental, and the like, but since the
village is making out like bandits through campground fees (the village
owns the campground), they shouldn't be much, not to mention all the
business the sea kayakers bring in. I know if I was sitting on the village
council, I'd be willing to just about let the sea kayakers have it for
free, due to all the extra business.

But you know what? I've got a problem with paying through the nose to spend
a potload of money to hear Nigel Dennis come in to peddle his own product
and berate everybody else's. Granted, there's a ton to learn from him, but
he gets so much free advertising he ought to pay to be there. What are they
paying him, and are they flying him over on the Concorde to boot?

I don't know what they charge merchants to show up to one of these things,
but since Great River Outfitters is intimately involved with the
organization of the Great Lakes Symposium, I'd be surprised if they paid
more than a token fee. I wouldn't be surprised if the organization paid
them and other dealers to be there. I don't know how it's actually done
there or elsewhere, but perhaps Matt Bronze can enlighten us a little -- do
dealers have to pay to attend these events? A token fee, or lots? 

It seems to me that it would worthwhile for a dealer to spend several
hundred bucks to attend one of these events and have a booth set up, for
the advertising value, and the fact that you'll go a long way before you'll
find a bigger group of potential customers in one place at one time. If
this were a show organized by a commercial outfit, like say, Showspan,
which runs a lot of shows in this neck of the woods, the dealers would be
paying big time -- but the dealers would be making a profit by having the
big number of potential customers there. I'll bet Rutabaga breaks even or
maybe even loses a little on the organization of Canoecopia, but they make
it back and even more in sales.

In either case, organizers are going to get a bigger turnout, and more
customers, at a gate fee of $5 or $10 a pop, or even free, than they are at
eighty or a hundred bucks. Do the organizers of these symposiums say to
themselves, "Well, these are sea kayakers, they've got money, they'll be
glad to fork it over and we can be lazy and won't have to do the work to do
it right"?

Sorry guys. I'm not a rich man. I'm not saying that I have to squeeze every
dime until Roosevelt cries out in pain, but I do have to be reasonably
careful with my recreational dollar. By the time everything is said and
done, it'd cost me $250 to $400 to go to either one of these events I've
been ranting about. I can find a bigger bang for my recreational buck
elsewhere; I don't think it cost me $250 to go to Isle Royale for eight
days last year. I'm planning on going to Canoecopia, but I think I'll give
the vastly overpriced symposiums a pass until they can get their act together.

-- Wes

Who is obviously feeling a little cranky today . . .

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