I have a suggestion that might fix this:

Isn't that weekend late enough that it pretty much removed NC and Atlanta from the running due to it being too hot?

Why not do a two-prong approach: these June dates will be if we select a city up North, but we'll have a secondary date vote for March or April to determine the dates we use if we select a city down South? That way people from both latitudes will be able to pimp their cities with impunity, and we'll know when it comes time to vote for the city we'll have a straight choice: early spring South or early summer North.

For example, let's say our first choice for North ends up being June 15th-17th, and our first choice for South ends up being March 23rd-25th (please note: I am completely making these dates up for the sake of illustration). Then the people in the South can do research for those March dates and the people in the North can do research for those June dates...because generally the North is gray and rainy and nasty in March, and the South is hot and humid and stifling in June, but the South in March and the North in June are gorgeous. Pimpage would follow, and people would be able to decide which options would work best for them when voting for a city in conjunction with the date we'd already decided on for that region.

Does that work as a good compromise? All it would take is one more poll for the South. Possible March/April weekends: March 9-11; March 16-19; March 23-25, April 6-8; April 13-15; April 20-22.

I'd also be totally fine with a runoff date vote for the top 2 for each region, as Aimee had suggested. Thoughts?

I'd also be totally fine with a runoff date vote for the top 2 for each region, as Aimee had suggested. Thoughts?

Works for me, especially as my dates flex a bit depending on what city it is for anyway.

Plus, for the March/April dates, one or more of them may coincide with spring break for some of the college/teaching folks. Opens up more possibilities of seeing new faces.

Sail, yep. There are two weekends in the March/April span that would fall in my break, and I'm sure several other people have the same thing.

I can manage March or April, fwiw. (I didn't get around to voting in the poll, alas.)

Last weekend in March(FilkOntario) and the first weekend in April(beginning of Passover) are out for me, but other weekends in that time frame may well work.

My take on the dates tends to be city/temperature variable. Any time at all works for me in Boston, but the later weekends don't look so good if we end up choosing North Carolina.

But then the question becomes which takes priority, place or date?

By voting on date first, it kinda implies that that's the priority.

I also don't really see how we would proceed to a final decision if this vote does not end in a decision? Is the location then also treated as tentative, and we have a final run-off between date/place pairs? That seems rather unwieldy to me.

No, the final location would determine the date. Basically we make a final decision on the dates for the two regions before city pimpage. That means when we go to vote for the final location, we're actually also voting for the final date since date/location would be linked. I'm just trying to give a little more flexibilty in the early process.

It seems like treating the date as tentative is trying to re-fight a decision that was already made in deciding what to vote on first, and, honestly, we're not that early in the process. We need to be getting things decided and reservations made.