Hey David,
Thanks for the mention on your blog space. I will definitely be interested to hear the thoughts of folks from this year's Annual Meeting, too.

Hey David, Here's my 98 cents. Handouts would be great to have! Here's what I did. I went to print out the handouts online. For the first session I was going to attend (In the AMC Owners portion of the meeting) there was 5 PDF files of PPT presentations...hmmmmm (did not hit "print") I explored further in the Annual meeting sessions and found that I would need to carrying a mother load of handouts with me TO San Diego in what was already a full suitcase. Secondly, after spending ~$2200 $2200 to register, hotel, do the Food & Wine charity gig, and an extra beer or two in the hotel, etc, I felt a bit cheated to not have what would have been about $15 worth of handouts ready for me on site. So I propose this: Why not allow the attendees to "buy" the handouts they want and deliver them to them on site at the registration area. That way those who want to print, can and will also pay for the added convenience and educational value. Couple this with the absolute mandate on speakers that they provide session materials (for appropriate sessions) and you may have just cracked the code. It would be a wonderful experiment at ASAE '09 and its likely that Omnipress can help.

Thanks for the idea, Paul.

Even for lower cost meetings, attendees often feel cheated if they don't get a handout of some kind.