Chicago DO to Detroit
 

Great DO! I left the DO about 3:30 p.m. yesterday and what is normally a 4¼ hour drive back to Detroit took 5½ hours, & it was pouring buckets for the first 3 hours, and traffic was a nightmare from the DO until past I-55 (I don't understand that on a Sunday afternoon). I offered someone who was flying back to DTW at 6:30 p.m. a ride back, but they decided to take their chances - I wonder what happened.

Traffic's always like that from ORD into the city in the afternoon. When I was leaving to drive back to Michigan (not DTW, but part of the route is the same), I mentioned going through the city & the hotel said no, no, don't go that way!

So for future reference (ie, if you attend next year) to avoid the downtown is 83South to 290East to 294South to 80East/94 (reverse if you're going to the hotel rather tha leaving). Even w/ the rain & slower speeds, it was much faster than doing the city route. I did the Skyway/city route in on Friday & it took me 2 hours from where the White Sox play to the hotel, which was just painful!

I'm taking today off as the past week & weekend were chock-a-block full, but I'll be back tomorrow & will get raffle prizes out.

Again, many thanks to those who donated their $$, time & prizes!

Cheers.

Do we get to know who won the raffle prizes? :D

Those who were on-site already know. Those who donated via PM or on-site but weren't going to be there, we put their handles on the tickets so I could contact them to get their mailing address. Some of the 'not there' folk did win.

I will be sending out a PM to all those who donated via PM to let them know if they won or not (but if they didn't win they still owe me the $$ as I 'fronted' $570 in total on their behalf) & to let them know the amount raised for charity in case they're not checking this thread.

One 'not there' person received a tweet from an on-site attendee letting him know he had won, and he had already emailed me his address to send his prize even before I got home :D

Cheers.

:D I just always like to see the winner lists. :D I'm nosy, I guess.

Great DO - Thanks to the Organizers!
 

My first time attending the Chicago Seminars ... super informative and really enjoyed the speakers .... Ben / Lucky from One Mile at a Time and Captain Denny's sessions were my favorites. Loved the QA Session "Debate" with Lucky! Will definitely be back next year. Thanks to the organizers for putting together a great event!

Thank you Rick, Howie, Sharon, all the volunteers, the speakers, the sponors, and the HI Elk Grove for a great weekend.

Waiting patiently for the 2013 Chicago Seminars bookings to begin.

That's because you asked me to. ;) :D I'm glad that the suggestion for non-attendees to donate was approved. The extra $570 collected is ^
Sharon, thanks for all your hard work coordinating this effort. ^ ^

sbiral, welcome to Flyertalk. You don't have to wait for the next Chicago Seminar to learn. Next time you see a dinner posted (locally or international), sign up and go. Over the years, I've heard a lot of throw-away statements that are oh my moments. This is where you can really pick up pointers that may (cough) not be posted on Flyertalk. ;)

I hope you did go for a run after the deep dish :D
YES ! woo-hoo ! ^

Thanks to all who came to my ITA Software talk!
We'll be looking into producing some tutorial and cheat sheet for Matrix.
Also, since many asked, here's the Cheeseburger Route: UA1-199,UA1000-1299,UA1400-1744+

Thanks Arthur, I enjoyed your talk. It was the ultimate geek spiel. I asked you about a cheat sheet with additional codes beyond those currently displayed on the site. Thanks for offering to develop something - that would be fantastic!

And I did partake of an Angus Cheeseburger on UA 1614 returning to SFO. It was quite decent, with separately packaged lettuce, tomato and pickles. Very hot upon delivery. I lost a little of the bun when it adhered to the packaging, but all-in-all this item is a winner, one of a few positives from the old CO.

We were in the C Concourse of Terminal 1 and instructed to evacuate into the tunnel connecting B and C. I didn't bother snapping a photo, but I think you can imagine what the scene looked like down there.

We've never done an official winners list and probably never will due to the way the drawing happens/timeframe.

For those who haven't been before, we do the drawing mid-morning on Sunday right after one session & before another. We allocate 15 minutes to get through everything. Each year we go over & this year it took 30 minutes, so think we might allocate that in the future, although I've got a couple of ideas to streamline the process a bit for next year.

We have all the donated items on a table, a big bowl or box with all the raffle tickets mixed up multiple times by different people to make sure the tickets are good & mixed up, and I've got some volunteers ready to verify the winners & give them their prizes. I've got a microphone, announce the prize, pull a ticket (without looking) & read the #, I repeat the # 1-3x, and usually someone raises their hand or yells I've got it. A volunteer takes the ticket from me & the prize, and goes to the person to verify the correct # & hands over the prize. Meanwhile I've moved on to the next prize and/or ticket pull. If someone doesn't reply after 3x announcing the #, we discard that ticket & move on. For those who have won, after verifying the # is correct, we don't ask for their handles, hence there never going to be a winners list.

Again, we're trying to get all this done in a very short period of time & this year especially we had a LOT of prizes (which also meant more opportunities to win!), including some that were donated just as we were starting. If we had taken any longer just to get handles for a winners list & ate into the sessions, 450 attendees would be very unhappy.

In the past it's always been a 'you must be present to win' type of thing. Due to dhammer53 & sweetwillie asking if folk not attending could still donate/be entered for the drawing we decided to open it up. So for those who donated via PM I wrote their handle on the appropriate # of tickets they had purchased. Some who were on-site for the conference but were leaving early on Sunday also had this option - ie, purchase the tickets & write their handles.

One of my volunteers wrote down the handle/prize they won for any of the 'not theres' and gave it to me, so I could PM them to get their addresses & mail them their prizes. Doing the 'not there' process is actually extra work for me, but I decided to do it to increase the funds raised.

Again, I appreciate all who donated $$, prizes & also those who volunteered their time to help w/ selling tickets & handing out prizes.

Cheers.

:eek: That would have been a great photo though! :)

Cheers.

Thanks - it really was great! So many people (including myself) that don't know the power of this great tool. I look forward to using it more in the near future.