Join Us For The Chicago Frequent Flyer Seminars

This weekend the entire TPG team will be heading to Illinois for the 2012 Chicago Seminars which I am co-hosting along with The Frugal Travel Guy, Rick Ingersoll. There will be about 500 frequent flyer enthusiasts in attendance and several informative sessions for both beginner and advanced mileage junkies, as well as some fun cocktail hours thrown into the mix.

Throughout the weekend, the TPG team will be live tweeting from The Points Guy Twitter feed @thepointsguy. For anyone coming to the Seminars, or those of you at home interested in what is going on, the official hashtag of the event will be #chicagoseminars, so start tweeting and let's get the conversation going!

Here is the schedule of events for the weekend:

FRIDAY OCTOBER 12TH
6:30 - 7:20 PM Rookie Bootcamp: with Dave Homyak

7:30 - 8:30 PM
Delta SkyPesos to Delta Gold: with John Nielsen
Travel Technology with Cliff Stratton

SATURDAY OCTOBER 13TH
7:00 - 8:15 AM Breakfast

8:30 - 10:00 AM
Beginner: FF 101 Pudding Guy and Credit Cards for Newbies with Rick Ingersoll
Advanced: Itasoftware and Expert Flyer with Cara Kreft and Chris Lopinto

10:00 - 10:15 AM Coffee Break

10:30 to Noon
Beginner: Mommy Points and Elite Status- Challenges and Fasttracks with BikeGuy/PuddingGuy
Advanced: Captain Denny Flanagan Author

Noon to 1:00 PM Lunch

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1:00 - 2:45 PM
Beginner: Mileage Runs with Ben Schlappig
***Advanced: Transfers and Bonus Category Credit Cards with Brian Kelly

2:45 - 3:00 PM Coffee Break

3:00 - 5:00 PM
Beginner: Award Booking with Ben Schlappig
Advanced: Moderated Airline Breakout Sessions with Geoffco (top tier status all 3 alliances)

5:00 - 6:00 PM Meet the Speakers: Cash Bar/Hotel Lobby

***6:00 - 7:30 PM 
Advanced: Q and A Mileage Runs and Award Booking with Ben Schlappig and Brian Kelly
The Cruising Crowd with Marshall Jackson

8:00 - 9:00 PM Cocktail hour hosted by Rick Ingersoll and Brian Kelly

SUNDAY OCTOBER 14TH

7:00 - 8:30 AM Breakfast

8:30 - 10:00 AM Sponsors Workshop

10:00 - 10:15 AM Coffee Break

10:15 to Noon
Beginner: Belkin (Beaubo) as a Beginner
Advanced: Hotel Breakout Session

Noon to 1:00 PM Lunch

1:00 - 3:00 PM
Beginner: Gift Card Churning with Frequent Miler and Shopping Mall Bonanzas with Hans Golden
Advanced: Blogger Questions and Answers

My Presentations
From 1:00 - 2:45 pm on Saturday, I will be speaking about Transfers and Bonus Category Credit Cards and will be present throughout the weekend for mingling and there's also an "Ask the Bloggers" workshop on Sunday.

Saturday night at 8:00pm, there will be a Sponsor's cocktail hour in the Woodfield Ballroom of the hotel, so if you hang around after the last session stop in for a drink!

For more information on the Chicago Seminars you can read this thread on FlyerTalk.

Points Giveaways and The TPG Scavenger Hunt
Since the event was officially sold out by July 19th, I want to give those of you who weren't able to register the chance to follow along with the events from home and possibly win some prizes.

Throughout the weekend Eric, Kate, Ryan and I will be live tweeting (from @thepointsguy). Follow the conversation during my presentation and answer some trivia questions we'll throw out during it, and you could be one of 5 lucky people who win 1,000 Amex points each (transferred to your partner program of choice). Just be sure to Tweet me @thepointsguy and to include the hashtag #chicagoseminars to qualify.

To keep it interesting for the attendees of the conference, we've come up with a variation of a scavenger hunt that will take place during the course of the weekend.

The first 20 people to get pictures of the following 5 things and post them to your Twitter or Instagram account with #TPGhunt will get 2,000 Amex points (transferred to the partner of your choice):

1) Picture of yourself with all 4 members of the TPG team at once: Brian/ TPG, Eric the Managing Editor, Kate the Director of Ops and TPG Intern Ryan. We'll all be at my presentation and at the cocktail party, so you can catch us there.

2) Picture posing at one of the sponsor tables in the main lobby (Make sure to say hi to my friends at the Routehappy.com table!)

3) Picture fanning yourself with at least 5 Chase Sapphire Preferred Cards (I chose this one since the numbers aren't shown on the front) - so start making friends!

4) Picture of you posing with a banner or sign showing "Chicago Seminars".

5) Picture of you with a charity raffle ticket you've bought from Sharon (FT: Skiadcock) - there are going to be great prizes and Marriott just donated a bunch, so stay tuned for details.

When uploading each of your pictures, please use the same application each time (either Twitter or Instagram):

1) Follow The Points Guy on Twitter

And Tweet your photo to @thepointsguy and include the hashtag #TPGhunt in your Tweet.

2) On your smartphone, download the free Instagram App and then follow me at thepointsguy:

Then click the camera button and upload your photo. Make sure you include @thepointsguy and #TPGhunt in your caption so it is included as an official entry.

To be eligible to receive points, all photos must be uploaded with the correct hashtag by Sunday October 14th at 4:00pm CST which is when the final session of the Chicago Seminars ends.
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