Email for Susie: susie@keywestkey.com

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MOTM Breaking News:

Greetings, Parrot Heads. Here's a 24 Hours Later Look at the Opening of Registration:

At the time of this post we are 24 hours into registration, by far the biggest day of registration in the event's history. That's awesome, full stop. While there's always a few outliers, we appreciate that the vast majority of folks, even in the face of legitimate frustration and disappointment, are nonethelss able to be kind, appreciative of the tireless work of our volunteers, and understanding of the challenges they are dealing with. Thank you! That's the Parrot Head Way!

Registration Issues:
The vast majority of people had a smooth experience with the MOTM team's newly unveiled MOTM.rocks website and registration system. Hundreds of hours of volunteer work went into the deveopment of the system, and we appreciate the work of Joe Klen, Tamara Dower and my co-chair Jed Johnson,as well as co-chiar Suzanne Calhoun and the lovely and brilliant Michele Watson working on hotel relations and serving as VIP concierge.

Minutes into the VIP registration opening, a series of tornadoes struck the Austin, Texas area, where our website host is located, and power was knocked out on the website for reasons unrelated to the extremely high traffic on the site. While this issue was resolved inside of an hour, the high volume of transactions caused the payment processor to crash, which occurred again twice duing the opening hours of general registration yesterday, depsite assurances that the problem was resolved. This obviously caused us and all the members attempting to register in the first two hours a lot of grief and led to a fair about of gnashing of teeth all around. We are not likely to encounter another rush of that sort.

Athough confirmation emails are being sent automatically, a significant number of people are not receiving them. Some have been delayed and some have been filtered into Spam folders, but some seemingly have been banished to dark corners of cyberspace. We are likley going to send another copy of ALL confirmation letters later this week to address this problem, even though that would mean many receiving a duplicate confirmation.

We have now changed a default position of the process which prohibits multiple credit card transactions from the same email address. While designed to protect you against accidentally making multiple transactions where only one is intended, we determined that this was causing more headaches than it prevented, and the system will now allow a second registration on the same email address for people that share email addresses.

Hotel Sellout
As most of you know, the Casa Marina Resort reported a sellout in less than two hours of general registration. While this is remarkable, it is not unexpected, and in fact it would have happened in much less time if not for the payment processor shutdown.

This year's math with regard to staying at the Casa is very different than all previous years. No more than 30 pecent of attendees and less than 20 percent of the capacity attendance stays at the Casa, and historically, most attendees prefer NOT to stay at the Casa, and one of the reasons for this is that the Casa was typically more expensive than other accommodations on the island. This year, PHIP was fortunate to negotiate an extraordinary discounted room rate which, though still expensive, is less than 30 percent of the Casa's published rates for that time of year and much less than many other properties in the neighborhood. Thus, no matter WHAT we did as an organization, a relatively few people were going to get hotel rooms that are comparatively very inexpensive and most others were not going to get those inexpensive rooms. And no matter what we did, there would be people who could legitimately argue that the process was unfair. The Board adopted a hybrid approach in which a little less than a third of the rooms - the most expensive - were set aside for VIP bundles, while the remainder of available rooms were listed on a first-come basis to people post-registration. This was done in an effort to develop a VIP program, something that virtually every music festival and regional parrot head and trop rock event do, while still extending the considerable benefit of the the negotiated group room rate to the members. The Board explicitly rejected the idea of designating all rooms at the Casa as VIP.

Upgrade to VIP Room Bundle?
The Casa "Sellout" does not include the VIP premium room bundles managed by PHIP, a few of which are still available through PHIP at www.motm.rocks. We dont have an "upgrade" option per se, but if you wish to do this, simply register for the Room Bundle and let us know, and we will charge back your original registration

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Alternative Lodging

There are many other places to stay in Key West. Since the origin of the event, the vast majority of attendees have stayed outside of the host hotel. Most prefer to stay outside the hotel. We realize that the cost of such placesis up , much like the cost of travel and lodging in other tourist destinations, and it will likely be more expensive than in past years, but there are multiple area hotels with prices listed on various services that are not TOO much more than our group discounted rate.

Many of you know Susie Rodnon whose facebook business link is here: https://www.facebook.com/keywestkey. She is a walking, talking map of vacation rentals on the island and recommends sharing 2BR/2ba condos, which can be done fairly inexpensively depending on location. Best to book soon, as prices will go up as Parrot Heads reduce inventory in the coming weeks.

Hotel Waiting List?
We had not planned on a waiting list based on our experience last year, but we are investigating whether there is a way to do it fairly and effectively, which requires a buy-in from the Casa, which is complicated. The problem is that other than the VIP rooms, which we manage, we have no control over the cancelation and booking process. Consequently, last year, while we had people on a waiting list, there were others snagging rooms at the Casa after a cancelation, just by calling the reservations line and bypassing the waiting list, then celebrating on Facebook, mushc to the dismay of those patiently waiting on the list. We will do a waiting list only if we can do it fairly. Stand by for more announcements on this.

Thanks, everybody, for your extraordinary support of the 30th Annual Meeting of the Minds, for your kindness and patience, constructive criticism, and your enthusiasm for the coming epic party with a purpose!