Preset Mixer 2012: We Go Old School In Las Vegas

January 24, 2012 by Dave Haynes

Ok, the details are set – The 3rd Annual Preset Group DSE Mixer is March 6th at the Golden Nugget on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas. The event is 5:30-8:30 PM in the Gold Diggers lounge at the famed Nugget, with an open-air patio-balcony that looks down on the street and up at the amazing LED digital light canopy.

As in the past, this is a registered event. We’d invite everybody attending DSE, but that’s an awfully big bar and an awfully, awfully big bar tab. Especially considering it’s digital signage people.

So, the crowd will top out at 300, up from last year’s 250ish and 180 on year one. This actually goes back to the roots of the event – an informal mixer in 2009 amidst the old-school red velvet, brass and flaming fire-pools pit lounges of the Peppermill. About 50 people turned up that year, wondering where in the hell Haynes had dragged them into.

Why Fremont? Well, piles of people go to Vegas every year for trade shows and never see anything but the airport, the Strip and the LVCC. People say they’ll get to Fremont at some point, but never do.

But isn’t it far away??? Nope. It’s the same distance to get to the Nugget as it is to get to the MGM Grand, except almost no traffic. Getting a cab back to the Strip is a piece of cake, or you could stay downtown. Been there, done that. It’s different, but kinda cool.

Isn’t Fremont pretty down-market? Not really. The Nugget is a very nice four or five star hotel. Maybe not the Bellagio, but still very nice. The people-watching is very interesting, but that applies to just about anywhere in Vegas.

The attraction to the Nugget was the offbeat location, but also the ability to get a whole place to ourselves. Year one at the Palazzo was very nice, but we were packed in the lounge of a fully working restaurant/bar. Last year we had a whole floor to ourselves at the Monte Carlo’s brew-pub, but lotsa ambient noise from the restaurant right below. This year, it’s just the digital signage mob inside and on the balcony.

I put the word out about sponsors (who help pay the bar tab) mid-afternoon and already have three, but we need 10 to do what we want to do. Sponsor slots are less than $1K and you get reserved access tickets and lotsa recognition and thank yous. Send me a note if you want to help buy the industry a drink.

We already have a pair of tech partners who are going to help do some check-in and social visualization stuff to actually walk the digital screen and engagement talk. I’d love to hear from others, particularly on the interactive touch side.

We also plan to do some other things to make the evening particularly memorable.

Start time is early for a few reasons. People can come straight over from the pre-show seminars, or booth set-up. There are other commitments people have come evening, so they can swing by here and then attend other functions (or bail and hang out with us). We can’t do food (they don’t do it up there), so people can have a couple of pops and then chase down a meal somewhere. Or not. There’s always street food down below, and then back at it.

The big question – when do tickets go up? Not for at least a week. First, I need to get that organized in the middle of reducing the work pile. Second, I’m traveling part of the time. Rest assured there will be notice.

Watch this space.

photo credit: time_anchor via photopin cc

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