In Brief... Tobi Brimsek

The goal of this month's column is to start off the new year with a twist. Jon Driver, our annual meeting program chair for Seattle, and the staff have shared some insights to give you a different perspective of SAA--one "by the numbers" to reveal some interesting facts.

About the 63rd Annual Meeting in Seattle:

• There will be 181 symposia, general sessions, and forums.

• Excluding discussants' comments, there will be 1,675 formal presentations.

• During an average day, we will use 57,000 square feet of the Washington State Convention and Trade Center for symposia, general sessions, and forums, while, at the same time, we will use approximately 24,000 more square feet of meeting space at the Sheraton Seattle (and this does not include poster or exhibit hall space!).

• During an average day, 3,200 seats will be available, excluding the large session room which accommodates 1,500 more seats.

• From spring 1997 through the end of the year, staff collectively spent more than 1,000 hours planning and implementing meeting and pre-meeting activities for Seattle.

• As of this writing, the exhibit hall will present 46 exhibitors in 65 booths.

We expect a record-breaker in Seattle in every way. Just some quick reminders:

• The deadline for advance registration is February 23, 1998.

• The deadline for housing forms is February 25, 1998.

Other SAA programs tell an interesting story through numbers as well...

• In 1997, 484 new members joined SAA.

• Staff made changes to more 4,000 member records in 1997--66% of all member records

• In the last six months, approximately 15% of the membership has reported email addresses, most in response to our "Get Connected" campaign. If you haven't shared your email address with us yet, please do! You can email it to membership@saa.org. Currently we have email addresses for 58.3% of the membership. We look forward to your "getting connected."

• Thank you for the attentive response to dues notices--approximately one-third of our members renewed on the first notice.

• The public education program has distributed 24,125 copies of Reaching Kids through Archaeology since its spring 1996 printing.

• Also in the same time period, more than 14,600 copies of Archaeology and You were distributed by SAA.

• In 1997, 52% of the membership subscribed to Archaeology and Public Education.

• In 1997, SAA government affairs staff visited 287 offices on Capitol Hill.

• The manager of government affairs spent more than 500 hours on Capitol Hill in the past year.

• In 1997, 776 finished pages of American Antiquity were produced, the editors having edited 88,200 words.

• In 1997, 400 finished pages of Latin American Antiquity were produced, the editors having edited 45,320 words.

• In the past 10 months, sectors of the SAA web site have been accessed 360,390 times.

• The daily average of accesses is 1,377.

• The most frequently accessed sector of the web is the main page, followed by "About Archaeology" and then the publications section.