Seattle seems to be ridiculously expensive to fly to, based on my past experience of tentatively planning vacations.

This was the case with New Orleans as well.

Speaking as one of the Seattle bunch: I have NO organizational skills. Plei has slightly more than me. Unless we can talk Susan into doing event-planning things (which I know she's very good at), Seattle might not be such a good bet. Plus, yes, expensive to fly to.

When I lived in San Francisco, SouthWest Airlines often had ridiculously cheap airfare to Seattle (like, $40 one way). But this was ten years ago so I have no idea what the market's like now, or if it's more expensive to fly from places other than the West coast.

I'd certainly be up for organizing, as long as I had minions to help out.

(It's a big step for me to admit I need minions. Normally I try to do it all myself, but, let's see, I've got a kid, a novel, a job search that I hope will be a job by then, etc.)

I'm good at minioning.

I'm not bad at minioning.

One advantage San Francisco has price-wise is that both the Oakland and San Jose airports are relatively reasonable alternatives (price difference anywhere between $10 and $50/ticket, depending where you look). I don't know SJ at all, but Oakland has a fairly cheap shuttle between the airport and BART, which will then get you within shouting distance of most anywhere else in the Bay Area (or at least connect you to other public transit to all the most anywhere BART itself doesn't go).

Another is that it has a goodly number of localistas available for tour-guiding and shuttling. And I hesitate to offer up anyone else's couch, but I'm fairly certain, barring freak happenstance, that Hec and I could host at least one Buffista if someone couldn't afford the hotel.

But I got no dog in this fight, myself. I'm totally happy to go to Seattle, or anywhere, really, assuming the financial demons don't eat us from our bottoms in 2006 the way they did this year.

I think one West Coast location will be as feasible (or unfeasible) as another for me, so I'm gonna be pretty good with whatever works for the most people logistics-wise. I would like to see the Bay Area or Seattle, having travelled to LA nearly every year since 1999, but surroundings take a definite backseat to company.

Seattle seems to be ridiculously expensive to fly to, based on my past experience of tentatively planning vacations.

This was the case with New Orleans as well.

Which contributed to why I couldn't go -- too 'spensive.

As far as dates go, I vote June. For purely selfish reasons. I'll be done with school for the semester and won't have to worry about studying/paper writing/etc.