Writer's Conference: One Day or Entire Time?

In today's short blog, I'll attack the two easiest sets of questions I posed yesterday.  I'm planning on attending a writer's conference, and to recap, here are a couple of decisions I have to make.

• Do I sign up for the whole event (Friday evening to Sunday morning = $350 + hotel stay of $200)?  Or do I only go for one day (Saturday = $300 + no hotel)?
• Do I sign up for NCWN membership?  It saves $100 on registration.

So many choices just in these two sets of questions!  Most expensive scenario: $550 for the full stay.

First off, I'm curious how much NCWN membership costs.  I check out their site and: wow!  It's only $75 for an annual membership!  Okay, this is a no-brainer.  It's almost as if they want me to join.  What's the catch?  If I join, I get $100 off of the conference - plus I get access to all the member-only things.  In other words, I'd be saving $25 bucks overall and getting more services.

Okay then - one decision down.  I'm signing up for NCWN membership tonight!

Then my most expensive scenario becomes: $250 (conference - full time) + $75 (membership) + $200 (hotel - 2 nights) = $525.

And my cheapest scenario: $200 (conference - Saturday) + $75 (membership) + $0 (no hotel) = $275.  (I save $250.)

Since I only live 90 minutes away from the conference, and it's my first time, the optimal choice may be the cheap-y route.  If I do that, I'd be missing the Friday-night welcome stuff including Micheal Malone's Keynote; and the Sunday stuff including two session workshops and the "Agents and Editors" panel discussion.

Or I could sign up for the full conference and skip the Friday stuff (one night in the hotel - total price = $425).

It looks like I still need to think about this one.  So many choices - and I'm only on the "easy" decisions!!!