Brandon,
It's so good to hear from you!! I don't think I've seen HomebrewTalk Brewers. What is your URL? Anyhow, I would love to sign you up for a booth at Club Night at this year's National Homebrewers Conference!! Here is some additional information regarding Club Night.
Club Night is the event that is scheduled for Friday night, June 22, during the conference. At this point, it's scheduled to go from 7:30-11:30 on that Friday night so that means you will want your "booth" (table) set up and ready to go by then.
Basically you will be assigned a "booth" (which will most likely be about a 6 foot table and space around that) where you will serve whatever homebrew you want to bring from your club. Most clubs usually pick a "theme" for their booth and decorate, etc their booth, as well as possibly "dress up" to go along with that theme. You will need to bring your kegs up, or bottles of beer if you're not kegging. The conference will provide refrigerated storage for you, so when it's time for Club Night we will then bring your kegs/beers out of the storage there at the conference and deliver them to your booth. You will also need to bring along your own tap system or whatever you plan to use for taps. I believe the conference will provide the CO2 for you as well as tubs for your kegs and ice. You will need to let me know, as the date gets closer, what other equipment your club may need. In your case, I'm not sure if you guys will be serving beers like the other homebrew clubs, so you'll have to let me know if there's any specific equipment, supplies, etc that you may need for your "booth".
There really isn't any restrictions that I can think of for your "booth", other than I believe in the past the hotels usually don't allow us to hang anything on the wall behind the booths/tables. You can hang things from your table though, or if you build/bring any other type of structure for your "booth", you can obviously hang whatever you want from there (last year in Orlando, one of the clubs brought a "tiki bar" that they had built and that was their "booth". Their theme was a tropical/island theme.).
It sounds like we will have access to the ballroom (where Club Night will be held) starting at 4:30pm on that Friday so we will have plenty of time for set-up (will just need to be at your booth ready to serve your beer, or whatever, when the doors open for the event at 7:30).
Let me know what other questions you have. I will add your club to the list and will be sending out additional communication soon to gather information from the clubs regarding how much beer they plan to bring (so we can plan the amount of space we'll need for the refrigerated storage) and what equipment you may need, etc.
If you're planning to bring beer, as far as the amount of beer to bring, assume there may be about 800 people coming through on Club Night sampling beers. I've seen clubs bring anywhere from 4 to 20 5-gallon kegs. I think if you bring less than 4, that's still okay, you just may end up running out before the event is over.
Anyhow, like I said, let me know what other questions you have for now. Also, check out the AHA website for the latest conference information:
http://www.beertown.org/events/hbc/index.html
Thanks so much Brandon!! I look forward to seeing you in June!! Cheers!
Dottie Clapp
2007 NHC Club Night Coordinator
HBT represent!
