Well you can see how excited I was to go to eBay Live 2008! I loved New Orleans Live. So off I went - !
I have some suggestions for eBay for BEFORE the next Live or even before the next regional get-together:

1. Pick a more consolidated venue. Walking 2 miles from one class/seminar/talk to the next wears folks out. There's been a lot of talk about how "quiet" and unexciting this live was. I didn't think it was a lack of enthusiasm. More a lack of energy. I'm an "Original" ebayer - been here 11 years. I'm 60 Stinkin' years old. That walking stuff got old the first day.
   Maybe a college or university while they are on hiatus - so you'd have inexpensive housing in the dorms and the classes would all be pretty close together.
2. Schedule multiples of EVERY class since I got closed out of 3 because the fire marshall called a halt to the overcrowding of the rooms. Or put the popular ones in venues that can expand.
3. For the Gala?? Could we have some "dinner" music during dinner? So we can talk to the people at our table - especially for people like me that come by themownselves. It would have been nice to meet eight more people. But we couldn't hear ourselves think. On the shuttle afterwards, one of my fellow "oldies but goodies" say the band, Twisted Lister, was making his heart hurt. Made my ears hurt.
4. Besides color-coding classes by experience level (I think that's what they did), sort them by "Buying experience" or Selling Occasion
5. Quit it with the stupid buzz words. We counted (my friend Louise actually counted) during the keynote address and John Donahoe actually said "GREAT BUYING EXPERIENCE:" 21 times in like 10 minutes. JEEZ! get a new speech-writer.
6. Announce all the policy changes for the year at least 2 mos before LIVE so the classes can address the questions and confusions.

Will I go to Orlando? If I'm alive, I'm there. (I'm 60..ya know I hate to think I might not make it ...but realistically? I might not. I am however gonna try. )

I think eBay's making a big mistake isolating us and thinking we'll all gonna stay "down on the farm" after we've seen Amazon and Googlebase etc. All the venues should be encouraging us to make webrings of our various selling venues, letting our Amazon customers come to eBay and vice versa. They'll all cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

Does the various venues' mgmt think we won't find ways "around the roadblocks"? I have confidence someone is figuring it out right now. Won't be me cause I ain't that smart but I will follow their lead.

At this year's eBay Live, I did find the enthusiasm to be more subdued. It was more like resignation - "oh well I put a lot of work into my ebay store - guess I will keep it going." Rather than "OH MAN! THIS IS GREAT!" like I heard in 2004 in NO.

I did see fewer people (and it wasn't hard to figure out when I walk right in and right up to the registration desk to get my badge.) The marble canyons of McCormick Place literally echoed - it needed more bodies for absorb the sound waves.

WHAT did you think?