Arisia moving this year

(NB: I'm staff at Arisia, but not speaking for it in any official way here. This is just my quick, unofficial take.)

Quick signal boost for anybody who didn't get the email (it was sent widely, but I'm not sure it will get to everybody): Arisia will be changing hotels this year. The hotel strike against the Westin Waterfront is still in full force, and much of the Arisia staff (not to mention many attendees) aren't willing to cross the picket line. So we're going to be moving back to the Boston Park Plaza (where the convention was held for many years) for this go-round.

This is just for this year, not a permanent move. But we're now close enough to runtime that we had to make a decision, so the board cancelled the 2019 contract yesterday, and formalized the move.

As to the Renaissance Ball that I usually run at Arisia: things are still in flux. We have a lot of function space at the BPP, but not the same spaces as at the Westin, so the expected schedule has kind of gone into the shredder, and everybody's re-jiggering everything now. Hopefully we'll have space for the Ball when all is said and done.

See this FAQ for more details. For those fretting about "The Park Plaza isn't big enough!", note that it's been heavily renovated since we were last there, and has a good deal more capacity than it used to.

ETA: yes, even if the strike is resolved, this move is happening -- we set a hard deadline of Friday and made it very clear to the hotel, and by now the contracts have been changed. So that particular ship has sailed...