Manning Networking Convention 2012

Motion

MOVED by Jim McIntosh, seconded by Allen Small, that the Party spend $900 for a booth at the Manning Networking Conference being held at the Ottawa Convention Centre March 8-10. In addition the Party reimburse a member of the executive up to $400 for travel and living expenses to attend the Convention and provide training to Ottawa members for Operation Politically Homeless.

The motion was discussed at the Feb 12/12 Meeting. It was moved and passed to provide Goods and Services Receipts to anyone who paid their own registration and helped out at the booth. The above motion was amended to provide up to $500 for travel and living expenses. The amended motion was carried (4-1-1).

Feb 15/12 Update - Phil Bender submitted the application form and it was accepted and qualified for the Early Bird fee of $800 (+ $40 GST in Alberta). Jim subsequently sent a cheque to the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.

Background

This motion will only be presented if one or two of our members in Ottawa (such as Dave Paul, Phil Miller, GJ Hagenaars) agree to organize it.

In 2009 the Party paid $700 (without financial help from the LPC) to rent a booth at the Manning Networking Conference and reimbursed Phil Bender, our organizer for the event, for travel and living expenses. We did not rent a booth in 2010 but we sent Phil Bender as our representative. I believe there was no conference in 2011.

Details about this years Conference are available here.

Registration as an exhibitor in 2012 is $900 (no HST) and includes

• registration for two representatives,
• a 10'x10' booth,
• a 6' table, and
• 1 600 watt electrical outlet with 2 plugs.

Actual fee was $800 (Early Bird) plus 5% GST --LibertarianCFO 11:26, 20 February 2012 (EST)

Katrina Chowne kicked of the discussion on Feb 4 with an email to Allen Small, John Shaw and others. She said, “If this is something we should be a part of, we need to have some of our younger members be highly involved in this, organizing and manning a booth. Perhaps this is something the OLP and LPC should go in on together?"

An Extract from John Shaw’s reply -

I manned the booth at this event, the booth was co-sponsored by the LPC/OLP 3? years ago, with the Ontario Party so have some experience. For two days of effort and some cost we got one new member and most did not even sign up the mailing list when invites were sent as follow-ups. The people there are almost all insiders of the Conservative Party so the disinterest is not surprising. We did meet a few people from the press and that could have been useful, had what seemed to be good chats with a couple of them, but not a single one ever followed up to us or replied to follow-ups sent to them so hard to tell if there was any influence there or not. Several wrote articles about the event, there was no mention of us in any.

At his keynote address at this event Harper specifically slogged the libertarian concept: by name and in detail as naïve and dangerous and he essentially told them to get out of the party if they were not going to smarten up. This got a standing ovation. When Preston Manning was making his rounds to thank all the exhibitors he made a point of avoiding us, when Phil went over to talk to him he pretty much brushed him off. He spent maybe 20 minutes at each of the other booths. This is the Preston Manning who was supposedly of the `big tent' of the Reform.”

We will need to prepare some sort of handout. We still have several thousand election pamphlet ‘shells’ from the election we could use with a general Party overprint (instead of the Candidate overprint). We should print them up anyway and have them available for distribution.

It would be better to have a pamphlet that addresses the theme of ‘’’Government as Facilitator’’’. If government is a failure as a business manager, what makes us believe it will be any better as a facilitator? As a “facilitator,” will it continue to provide subsidies for failing businesses? Will it continue to create regulations to protect favoured businesses?

We could also have a laptop running "The Philosophy of Liberty" flash animation.

Pros

(Preferably organized in order of importance.)

1. Members of the media will see us involved and this will improve our visibility and credibility with them.
2. We will have greater party involvement by one or more of the Ottawa members assuming they agree to organize it.
3. We may get a few more members if the organizers have effective follow up with the leads.
4. Publicizing our involvement (web site, Facebook, Bulletin) will encourage our members to provide more support (time and/or money) for the Party.
5. A lot of the young people will be in attendance and are attracted to Libertarianism so it may be a good source of contacts.
6. If we could get a member to submit a proposal to the Manning Democracy Challenge by Feb 15 we may gain even more recognition. (If we do go ahead, we should start earlier next year.)

Cons

1. $900 is a lot of money. Is this the best way to spend it?
2. Most of the attendees are committed Conservatives. We aren't likely to get many (if any) new members.

Vote

<poll> Please register your vote here. In Favour Opposed Abstain </poll>

<References/>