Greetings,
Our 2026 Conference & Meeting is now history. From the feedback we have received by phone, text, and email, it was a great success. As mentioned in my last post on January 19, many people worked hard to achieve that success. We do not have time to rest on our laurels. In 6 months, we will be working on our next conference to be held in January of 2028. Before we get started, we would like to provide some information for your consideration.
According to our count, we had 119 people in attendance at our conference, including speakers. We had 96 guests in attendance at the banquet, and the silent auction netted the Society $14,459.50! Based on our analysis, we were able to pay (in full) for the reception, conference, and banquet with money left over.
We also learned a lot from this last conference, information that can be used when planning our next conference. Our recently implemented security measures worked out very well, but we identified areas for improvement.
We will be implementing the same facility at Indian River State College for future conferences and will also be using the same vendors who provided great service. We received a lot of compliments on our gourmet continental breakfast and the catering at the Meet & Greet/Reception. We will definitely be planning another banquet along with a silent auction. As an aside, the banquet, along with the auction, was a big hit!
We invite any of you who attended the conference, banquet, or reception to give us your thoughts on these events, and suggestions for improvement if you have any.
I would like to once again thank all of those who attended for their help and support.
Best regards,
Ben Costello
President, 1715 Fleet Society
