Crewmates, here’s a message of good news and bad news from Captain Mary…

Greetings to all!

First, the good news: the 18th Annual CONvergence Blood Drive is weeks away! We will be in the lobby greeting donors all day on Saturday, July 7th and we hope you’ll join us. Due to popular demand the last few years, this will be our largest drive ever!

Please spread the word to friends and ask them to donate. They’ll get a special Red Cross t-shirt, plus the best (and hardest to get) badge ribbon at con!! Go to www.redcrossblood.org or contact First Officer Jane to sign up for your donation.

Now, on to the bad news:

I have some very disappointing news to share and I’m sorry about it. The Governing Board has been working behind the scenes for several weeks to avoid this situation, but we have been unable to come to a satisfactory solution.

We will not be having a hospitality room at CONvergence this year. There are a few reasons behind our decision, but the bottom line is that we don’t yet know the parameters of hosting a room. There are multiple factors in discussion that may change the prior rules, and these factors could significantly increase the cost to our group. The membership approved a budget at the September meeting and we are bound to honor it. The changes could have represented an increase of 100% over that budget.

The Board met at the anniversary picnic to discuss the issues and decided that we could wait until a particular drop-dead date, but no longer. That date has passed. We no longer have time to do the many tasks necessary to run the room. The truck has been cancelled and we will not be scheduling a work day to make repairs to the sets.

I want to stress that the CONvergence convention committee, and CONvergence itself, played no part in this outcome. I informed the convention of our decision this week and they are eager to have us back next year. We are excited, as always, to work with them.

We’ll talk at length about this at the September meeting, but that’s what you need to know right now to make your plans. We’ll still be at the convention and doing the blood drive, so we hope to see you there!

Mary

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