Reunion New for 2010
The Penticton Lakeside Resort & Conference Center is a spectacular venue for a Reunion. Although Penticton itself has only 3 Jazz flights a day, nearby Kelowna airport serves the entire Okanagan Valley with 27 flights a day between Air Canada, Westjet & Horizon Air from Vancouver, Calgary & Edmonton. Penticton is also a very popular tourist town in Okanagan Wine country, and September is in ‘high season’. Accordingly, your Committee had to institute a number of “innovative” approaches to increase attendance and motivate Members to make accommodation commitments much earlier than in previous years.
The key “innovation” is that your Committee believes that SPAADS Members need to consider “extending their trip to BC”. For some, attending the 2010 Reunion itself may be sufficient motivation. But for many others, an expensive airline flight, or a long car ride, may need to be justified by extending the trip to visit family or friends, taking an Alaska cruise, or having a BC holiday. Accordingly, you will find your Committee working hard to focus Members on such advance planning, and especially on Members making decisions in 2009 (rather than delaying accommodation & travel plans until late in 2010). The BC 2010 Winter Olympics will be over in February, so the Fall 2010 is an excellent time for a holiday in spectacular BC.
The BC Hosts program was established to draw wide support from the 161 BC-resident SPAADS Members. Your BC Hosts are proud that our SPAADS-2010 is being held in Penticton. But it should be understood that some of them --- for a multitude of good reasons --- will be unable to attend themselves. Nevertheless, all of us strongly welcome you to ‘Beautiful BC’, and urge all members to attend our 2010 Reunion. All of us stand ready to help you !
Statistics gathered from our SPAADS National Committee database show that 86% of the 520 Regular (and almost 60% of the 161 Associate Members) have email/Internet connection! This has led your Committee to decide that the focus of our communication effort should be via eMail/Internet. (We plan to issue one or two “snail-mail” flyers, but surface mail is an expensive and slow way to gather the information we need to coordinate a successful reunion.) We need to communicate and obtain feed-back quickly with Members. That is why we have placed considerable emphasis on this new “SPAADS2010.org” website, and the surveys/questionnaires we intend to conduct.
When your Committee realized in April that a small medical conference had also pre-booked part of the Lakeside Conference space, a decision was made to switch our Gala Banquet from Saturday to Friday. This gave us additional space, and exclusive use of the main ballroom. This also allowed us to switch our “Golf” date to Friday, thereby enabling us to satisfy our golf needs at Summerland, a prime golf venue in the area. The scenic ‘Naramata Bench’ (with its many vinyards just outside Penticton) then became the focus of our Saturday morning Wine tour. Grand Lunch will then be served for ALL Spaads 2010 Reunion Attendees at 1230 outside on the Lakeside Resort lawn. (Included in registration price), and at 1430 (weather permitting) there will be an "Air Salute" to SPAADS.
Moving the Gala Banquet meant re-scheduling the Squadron events to Saturday evening. In the past, SPAADS Reunion Committees have generally avoided involvement in Squadron events. However, Penticton is a very popular tourist area, and good dining establishments get reserved well in advance. So this year the 2010 Committee decided to re-emphasize Squadron events (to increase overall attendance) by taking a number of specific actions to reserve the best Penticton restaurants well in advance and available for Squadron events. (For more details, check out the “Squadron” section).
