Storymakers Conference 2009

Somewhere around this time last year, I got suckered, I mean talked into, running this year?s LDStorymaker?s Conference by last years lovely and talented conference queens, Heather Moore and Annette Lyon. Well, this whole Farworld thing came along and the next thing I knew, I needed to find a place and a date for the conference.

Two of the biggest complaints last year were that the meeting rooms were too small and the meals were too hard to get without missing some of the keynote speaker?s talk. This was not anyone?s fault, but just because we have grown so much every year that we didn?t fit anymore.

Well I have good news. We now have a date and a location. The date is April 24 and 25th. I know that?s about a month later than last year, but the Whitney committee had a very difficult time judging the books by the end of March when many nominations didn?t even come in until the end of the year. So this will help them. This should also avoid the conflict we had with the Childrens Writers Conference at UVSC.

The new location is the Hilton Garden Inn in Layton which is connected to the Davis Conference Center. This is a great location for many reasons. First, the Hilton Garden Inn is a GREAT hotel, and at a rate of only $89 per night it is $5 cheaper than the hotel we used last year. It is 19 miles north of Salt Lake, right off I-15. Near lots of restaurants and shopping. The real coup though is the Convention Center. This is a truly gorgeous state of the art facility that is attached to the hotel. We will have a ball room that seats between 200-250 people meal style, two classrooms that seat 50 each classroom style, a green room for staff and speakers, and one whole lobby of the convention center for the bookstore. In addition, the whole thing will be catered by the hotel, so no one will have to miss anything.

Because the cost of the meals is a little higher, we will have to increase conference prices a little, but I?m hoping to keep the increase as small as possible. We also have some great new speakers, agents, and editors. We are implementing a track system, which was another request, and we are going to leave the lunch open for socializing and move the keynote speaker back to the dinner time slot.

So mark your calendars! It?s going to be a great conference.