It took longer to work out the details than we’d expected, but the details themselves worked out better than we’d hoped, so the wait was worth it.  C&B 2011 will take place Monday, August 8, through Wednesday, August 10, with an evening reception before the event on Sunday, August 7. The venue will be the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Canada:The Banff Springs Hotel

When we were finished with last year’s C&B, we knew that it was going to be all but impossible to find a location as good as The Salish.  Unfortunately, we wanted to be able to accommodate more attendees, and we were already using all the available space at the Salish, so we set out to find something akin to that location, only more so.  We finally came up with The Banff Springs Hotel.  Like the Salish, it has a stunning natural setting, but it can accommodate larger groups, and the rooms for the technical presentations are well suited to those kinds of talks.  (Unless you’ve organized an event of this kind, you’ve probably never thought much about how high the ceiling needs to be, but ceiling height sets an, er, ceiling on the height of the top of the screen for presentations, and the height of the top of the screen is an important consideration in maximizing the visibility of the presentation materials for the people in the back of the room.)

It will be a couple of weeks before we’re set up to take registrations, but here is the fundamental information you need to know about C&B 2011:

  • The dates are August 7 through August 10.
  • All our technical presentations will be new. There will be no reruns of talks we gave at C&B last year.  Herb, Andrei, and I all have as a goal to offer truly new presentations, so even if you’ve read all our publications or attended other public talks by us, what you get at C&B 2011 will be something that’s not only insightful and useful, it’s also likely to be something you’ve never seen before.
  • Location is the Banff Springs Hotel, where we negotiated a nightly room rate of $189 (Canadian), which is less than half the going rate at places like Expedia, Kayak, Hotels.com, etc.  (Go ahead, check this out.  One of the reasons it took longer than expected to sign a contract for C&B 2011 is that we were doing everything we could to reduce the price of accommodations at the hotel.  Finding ways to minimize the generation of temporary objects is less taxing!)
  • Pricing is the same as last year, i.e., US$2995 for individual registrations, with 10% discounts for early birds and an additional 10% off for groups of three or more.  Early bird registration will run through June 10.

As I said, registrations will commence in a couple of weeks (I’ll post exact details when they’re determined, of course), so for now, (1) please set aside the dates for C&B and (2) think about what topics you’d like to see us address during the event, then post your suggestions as comments to any of the entries on this blog.  (Officially, I’m supposed to ask you to add them to this post, but the truth is that we get notified of and read all the comments that are posted to any of the entries, so go ahead and post your comments to whichever blog entry suits your fancy.)

I look forward to seeing you at C&B 2011 in Banff in August!

Scott