arisia | Mar. 21st, 2006

At this point, it appears that Arisia will not be returning to the Boston Park Plaza Hotel in 2007. The hotel's reasons for this are not entirely clear to us. Unfortunately we were not notified of their decision until mid February. By that time, all of our first choice hotels in Boston are already booked for January 2007 (and in most cases our first choice hotels are completely booked for all of 2007). We had hoped to have better news to report by now (i.e. a signed hotel contract) and were waiting for that to spread the word.

We are now searching for the best possible choice from the other hotels that are still available. At the March Arisia Corporate meeting the list of possible venues was narrowed down to three. We are now in detailed discussions and negotiations with those three hotels about Arisia 2007. We hope to have a signed hotel contract ASAP. At this point there seems little doubt that there will be an Arisia in 2007, the only question is when and where. It may not be in downtown Boston and it may not be MLK weekend. (We are also talking with our first choice hotels for Arisia in 2008 and beyond.)

-Rick Kovalcik
Arisia Corporate President
1-508-259-6819 (cell, 9 AM - 11 PM daily, please)
rk@mit.edu et. al.