Clearwater 2005 Update

May 12, 2005

The Clearwater YAL finally got its website up and operational, allowing for online registration and payment for all the events.  

Speaking of events, for the second year in a row, there will be an official concert event connected with this conference.  This year it’s Eirini Merkouri and Sarbel for the price of $45 on the Saturday night of the weekend. 

The new highlight of the weekend and the most promising new event has to be the YAL Greek Speed Greeting sessions on Thursday night and Friday night in the ballroom of the Hilton, the official hotel for the weekend from 7:00 to 9:00.  (This is basically Speed Dating.)  For those of you who have been on this site for a while, you may remember that the YAL in DC tried Speed Dating at its conference back in 2001.  It admittedly never really materialized at that conference, but our hypothetical preview of Greek speed dating, including much-valued pointers, remains one of the most accessed articles on the site by search engines all over the world. 

We’re glad not only that they are having this event early but that they are having it on two consecutive nights.   The Thursday night session will give the early crowd a good event to break up the otherwise superbly unstructured part of conference.  The Friday night session will give those who either just got off the plane on Thursday and couldn’t make it a chance to participate, or get those folks who may have been tired and surly after a long flight and participated anyway, a chance to redeem themselves.   Since space is limited, early sign-up is requested by sending an email to CLWYAL@AOL.COM. 

Otherwise we hope that everyone has booked their flight and their hotel and are secretly working on their tans during their lunch breaks by standing on the roof of their downtown DC office building, the best place to build a base tan.  (No fake tans please.)  Otherwise pack the sunglasses, the SPF 30 (for at least the first day) and start counting down the days.