It seems like all meetings try to cut AV costs as much as possible, but are willing to blindly pay $85 – $100 per gallon for coffee.  So which is more important?  When you’re reading the Sunday paper, it’s coffee.  Before (or during) your morning commute, it’s coffee.  If you want to deliver a message to your attendees, however, it’s AV.  I’m not trying to pick on coffee, I love coffee, I’m just looking at the value of a product/service in relation to how much planners are willing to pay for it.  So how important is AV?  If the coffee is cold, or late, or – God forbid – not there, you’ll get some complaints on your Eval sheets.  If your CEO steps up to the microphone and there’s no sound, you might lose your job.  When it’s a recurring conference, attendees get approval to register based on what they’ve learned at previous meetings.  If there’s no AV, there’s no learning; pretty soon that means there’s no more attendees.  I suppose event planners negotiate AV so aggressively because it’s one of the few services where they actually have a choice.  Coffee comes from the catering department and that’s that, but you can bring in any AV vendor you want.  That choice is valuable and should be exercised, but you should take advantage of the opportunity by bringing in a vendor who will provide the best possible service for your meeting, not whoevers brew is the cheapest.