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.)

I think this year we ended up with a more expensive hotel than the ideal (at least for me) because we pushed the decision back so late, and I'd like to avoid that in '05 if possible. Also, the "renting a whole B&B" idea is *awesome.*

And of course we won't be freaking out people there. Although somehow I like our inadverent tradition of scaring the locals and other vistors.

:) Though Minnesotans are very polite about being wigged out.

I'm more than willing to do a cost sheet for MSP, and any other pre-planny type stuff that may need to happen.

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

BWAH!