ND, I'm leaving now, and I should be there in 15.

I was thinking of Austin when I heard the humidity concerns.

Texas weather is, to say the least, wildly unpredicatable, but Austin would be a great city to have a F2F in.

I could help with the planning here (as I live in Austin) and there are several other Txistas who might be able to help out, though I'm not volunteering anybody but me, of course.

I still like the Buffistas in NOLA as a concept-humidity or not.

I'd be happy to help out with any planning for a TX based event. Houston/Dallas/Galveston/San Antonio/Austin are all fun cities.

Houston's a SW hub, IIRC.

Austin's got direct flights from SoCal (or did when I was consulting a few years ago) and possibly from NYC and Seattle as well, because of various industry ties.

San Antonio, where I lived for a couple of years is a city in search of a party 24/7.

Galveston is a lovely city. I've only been once, but I plan on many repeats. To do so with Buffistas would be a delight. It is a seaside town, so best prices would be after spring breaks and before Memorial Day weekend.

DFW has the AA hub, but as Heather that doesn't mean much for the airfares. Accessibility from various parts of the continent, yes, but not cheaply. Lots of stuff to do. I like the Ft Worth part of the metroplex better than Dallas, but then again, I've spent more time in FW. I even know where the zoo is. ;)

I would lean towards Austin, Minneapolis or KC myself, even though I would love to go back to NOLA at some point. There's too much to do there, and I think the late May time frame works better, but would be too hot for NOLA.

I like NOLA, but it seems like most people wouldn't want to go there this time of year, and I think that doing it earlier would just screw up too many people's schedules. So, if it's a choice between NOLA in April and somewhere else in May, I'd say somewhere else. I don't really have that much preference as to where, though.

I would lean towards Austin, Minneapolis or KC myself, even though I would love to go back to NOLA at some point.

I used to lean towards NOLA. Thanks, orthopaedic shoes.

Snerk.

So many good choices.

So, the planning/producing part of me is kicking in. I'm stepping forward to handle logistics for the F2F wherever it may be. In that interest I'm going to put together and calendar with a handful of deadlines for decisions. From having done a fair amount of producing and connference planning over the years one thing I've learned is you really can't make decisions too early.

So, here's to the launch of planning for F2F 2005, and I'm not even home from this one yet.

Along with airfares, we'll also need to think about average cost of things at the location. A location could be cheap to get to, but hella expensive to stay in, and vice versa.

Also, after this weekend, the idea of F2Fing in a low-humidity zone has definite appeal.

Would people be skeeved/irked/annoyed by starting planning in the near future? Early planning could very well allow us more options (such as renting out an entire small hotel/bed and breakfast/etc.)

Heh. X-posty with ND. I've already made a list of cities, etc. that have been suggested.

Buffista most likely to succeed at herding cats: Hil, who got a rowdy disorganized rabble of Buffistas in and out of train stations to their various destinations and safely back again. More than once. Thanks, Hil.

Thanks. Also have to give Drew some credit here for acting as human megaphone and repeating everything I said when the station got too noisy for me to be heard.

Would people be skeeved/irked/annoyed by starting planning in the near future?

It's never too early to start discussing location. But we don't need to make any decisions right away. (By which I mean, we don't need to have hotel reservations made by Halloween.)