Northwest SVX Awards Banquet Questions
 

Our next event is the Annual Awards Banquet in January.

For those that don't know, this is something we started a couple years ago as a fun way to do something different, and it has turned into our big chance to gather in the gloomy winter months when it is not as easy to be out driving or working on cars outside.

As the name implies, we do give out some awards, some serious, and some for fun. But first and foremost, it is a social event and everyone is welcome whether you have attended an event yet or not.

It's just a great time to eat, drink, and kick tires.

To help with the planning, I'd like to ask a few questions. Please vote in the anonymous poll to help us take the first steps towards making this something special. Below are some explanations for the poll choices...

Option #1
Awards banquet at a restaurant. This is what we have done the last 2 years. We find a restaurant that has a fair variety of reasonably priced food and a private banquet room that we can reserve. We set up the presentation as best we can in the room, and everyone orders what they want and pay for their own tab at the end of the night. Fairly informal, and has worked so far, though we have been tight for space both times.

Option #2
Awards banquet at a restaurant with an extended weekend. This is what we did last year to try to attract more members from out of the Seattle area. In order to make it more "worth" the long trip and/or give out-of-towners something to do the next day if they spent the night, we added a group breakfast and mini-tour on Sunday morning, as well as a mini-maintenance meet up at Earl's Saturday morning. Ironically, all the out-of-towners drove home after the banquet late Saturday night, and everyone at the tour on Sunday was actually local. Still was fun though!

Option #3
Awards banquet at a banquet room/hotel. Haven't done this before, and not sure if it is even possible with our group, but it would definitely be a step up. We would actually book a banquet room, probably at a hotel, according to the size of our group. We'd have audio/video and a place (stage, etc) for the awards presentation, and we'd get a group rate for rooms at the hotel. Menu would become limited to 2 or 3 choices, and there would definitely be prepayment required - well in advance. I wouldn't want the group to eat any cost on something like this, so everything, even the deposit, would need to be paid for by some sort of pre-registration process we'd set up. Not sure, but it would probably be somewhere around $20-30 per person, including dinner (if it was any more, I know it wouldn't work for us). This would be a more formal option, which might be fun, but would require more up front commitment (which I think may be more of an obstacle than the actual cost).

Option #4
Awards banquet at a banquet room with an extended weekend. As mentioned above, this would basically be like Option #2 except the dinner would be the more formal one. It would work cool having it at a hotel as everyone would already be there for the Sunday morning activities.

Hope this all makes sense, again, your vote is appreciated and feel free to add more feedback via reply here!

I liked last year. That was a very nice get together. :)

I too like Option #2. Driving up from Vancouver, WA only takes a few hours, but it would be a little more worth the trip.

Oh, and extended weekend works great cuz those that can stay will, and those who can't, well that is just as good as the other option for them (.02 cents).

This is of course true. :) But I was still checking because if the majority voted for the dinner only option, than obviously it would be a waste of effort to plan a whole weekend of activity.


As the results show, it looks worthwhile to go forward with the extended plan...

Where would it be held? Even though I no longer own an SVX.. Id still like to show up for a meet. And what is the date? I know its in Jan, but is there a set date? ~Dennis

Jan 21st weekend