Since many of you have asked about the change in locations, I wanted to provide a little more information on our new host hotel. For those of you who are not as familiar with DC, the Marriott Wardman Park is located 3 metro stops away from Metro Center (the previous location of the event), which translates to about 5-15 minutes away depending on your metro luck.
The neighborhood around the hotel is commonly referred to as Woodley Park and is completely great. There are tons of places to eat, including a Chipotle, and just two doors down is my personal favorite bar in all of DC, The Gin Joint. If you’re interested, this article mentions the GJ (I just made that up but hoping it will catch on) along with some of the other much-loved spots in the area.
In addition to the Marriott Wardman Park boasting far more conference and hotel room space than the old location at the Hyatt, it’s a historic DC landmark in itself. The first televised broadcast of “Meet the Press” took place there in 1947 and in the hotel you will find a plaque that commemorates the hotel as the site where, Langston Hughes, then a busboy, slipped famed poet Vachel Lindsay three of his published poems under a dinner plate. Impressed, Lindsay shared Hughes’s poems during a reading with a hotel audience later that night and by morning, reporters were lined up to meet the “busboy poet.”
But while the history of the hotel is swell and all, one of the most important strategic features of the hotel is it’s proximity to the notorious Adams Morgan neighborhood. You would be hard pressed to find a more happening row on a Saturday night, than Ad Mo. Between cheap dive bars, dance clubs and the all-around good time of Madam’s Organ, it’s hard not to have the night of your life there. So once the learning of each day dies down, plan to grab some of your new-found friends and head out on the town.
If you haven’t already booked yourself a discounted hotel room at the Marriott, what on earth are you waiting for? Reserve your spot today to make sure you don’t miss out on any of the fun that is to be had!