What we might want to do now is divvy up city research. Everybody pick a city and look up things like climate, transportation, hotel pricing, attractions, and the like.

I really think we should go with the bid system. If someone thinks we should go to "their" city they should put together a package and advocate with it.

I don't think that's practical for a July timetable with any degree of certainty.

I'm not sure there's a consensus of what we want to bid on, even.

Here's a resort closer in to Austin for y'all's perusal. [link]

Minneapolis is my first choice, with NOLA/Cleveland tied for second place. I do love Austin, despite the (shudder) bug life, but it's a personal thing; I'm probably going to be in Texas in March of next year, since Left Coast Crime (and there's a note for you - Mystery Writers of America seems to think Texas is west, not central) is being held in El Paso in 2005.

Well, El Paso is about as west as you can get in Texas, at least.

Not to squash anybody's initiative, but ND seems to have a pretty solid idea of how the timetable should work out. When he stops by today, he'll let us know what the next steps should be.

We're getting stuff done early, but there certainly shouln't be any sense of urgency at this point or anything. We're still eleven months out. Nobody panic.

And Texas is a honking big state.

Edit: what Sean said. ND is beautifully on top of it.

t runs about, panicking and screaming

t turns black and white

t slaps Aimée

t kisses her passionately

Mooommm, Sean is trying to steal all of our panic fun.

My top two choices are Cleveland and Minneapolis.

Denver would be tough for me because I suffer horribly for about 3 days when I hit altitude. Stupid aclimation to sea level.

I gathered a modicum of information on Denver but didn't post it for exactly the reason Laura mentioned. The possibility of a good number of 'fistas getting altitude sickness would not a fun F2F make. (Besides, who wants an F2F without Laura-n-Brendon?)