Thanks, Jon!

/notreallyhere

Thanks, I appreciate it. I know I'm a wuss but I also hate to ask people to change things they like because of my wussiness.

The Press announcement is up:

Voting Has Begun!

And with that, I close this thread.

This thread is reopened to discuss the following proposal by Pix. It is a revisit of a former vote which failed to meet quorum. It has passed its six month moratorium and therefore is eligible for reconsideration.

Proposal:

To give people time to plan ahead and get the best rates on traveling, October will be our official persuade-n-post phase for the coming year's F2F. During each October, people may propose a location in the appropriate region of the country based on our normal rotation, sell us its fine qualities, research possible venues for hotel rooms/prom (preferably the same venue for both or within walking distance), and suggest up to two possible dates in spring/summer for our official annual F2F. The date(s) for each location are completely up to the proposer’s discretion.

At the beginning of November, we will vote on the proposed location/date combo. If the proposer offered more than one possible date, we will hold a second vote to pick a final date for the winner. Once the date and venue has been set, the proposer/organizer will book the hotel so we can begin the process of raising the necessary money and making necessary investments in tickets, corsets, and sparkly tiaras.

Since we have already missed this deadline for the 2012 F2F, this year we will propose locations from October 15-November 15 and vote right after that (this will avoid the holiday/finals issue, I hope).

Vote! Vote! Vote!

Discuss! Discuss! Discuss!

Well since it is my proposal and all, I guess I’ll just say that my rationale is that I’ve seen a pattern over the past few years that when we start the process early, we tend to have a better turnout. I know some people can’t make plans so far in advance, but I think that the earlier we have a date on the calendar, the more likely we are to avoid booking anything else for that weekend (either business or personal) and have time to watch plane flights prices to get the best deal. Having 6+ months to save money helps. I also think it gives us more time to raise funds as a community so no one gets left with a big bill. We are all such busy people and many of us have families and personal situations that arise, obviously, but my hope is that by voting and booking early, we might be able to work around some of these. I know the year I arranged the NOLA F2F part of the problem was also overall costs (at the time, flights were pretty expensive) since we were only a few months out by the time we’d made final decisions.

I also think that if someone proposes a location and then has to back out due to personal issues--which again, is completely understandable--having voted and booked early will make it easier for someone else to take over the process.

I know that early booking isn’t going to solve everything and I think it’s natural that there are some years we will get a larger or smaller turnout based on uncontrollable factors, but this is my attempt to give as many people as possible the time to buy their tickets and book their rooms ahead of time.

I vote yay. Yea.

I think the upsides outweigh the downsides. Some people may get conflicts late, but that can happen even with a decision made at the last moment. Whereas with advance notice, some people will be able to avoid conflicts. I think it will help a lot more people attend than it will hurt. The latter number may even be zero some years.

Also (a tad off topic) I totally hope someone will pimp Portland, Oregon this year. Because POWELLS!