[AGA-mcm] 2006 convention?

I've remained pretty silent as the discussion has gone on, and on, and on, and on about the minutia of the 2006 convention. The San Francisco group has been at it for nearly 12 months and I don't see any final results. According to what we set forth last year, the bid should have been FINAL last fall and we should have made a decision and awarded the convention to someone by then.

Here we are, mid-January of 2006, and we don't have a firm date or a firm location. I've been asked about it when I promote the AGA at every talk that I do. I don't have an answer for people, and I can't even tell them we'll know by a certain date. One of the main reasons for setting this up a year ahead is that most people have to request vacation time at the beginning of the year. That window is now closed. While some of us are lucky enough that we can take off whenever we need/want to, most people don't have that luxury. That severely limits the number of people who can attend the convention.

I've held off as long as I could waiting for a convention decision/date, but this morning I finally had to make a decision and since we don't appear any closer to a date for 2006 than we were at this time last year, I've now made a speaking commitment in November. That makes two hobby related events that I'm committed to in November, and that's my limit for any month. That means my wife (who had to reserve her vacation time in late December) and I won't be coming to the convention.

Big deal? Well, we are generally kinda committed to doing hobby related stuff most of the time. I've now had to make commitments to tie up my time in November. She had to decide what she wanted to do weeks ago. Since we already had their dates, she chose the ACA with a backup date in case she couldn't get that of the Catfish convention. What about people that don't have the luxury of doing lots of hobby related stuff? They have to make a decision, too. This will further limit the number of people who are willing to travel long distances to a hobby event. Sure, there will be some die-hards that will drop everything, but that is a small group of people.

There are five other major aquarium hobby-related events already set up (for quite some time - some for almost a year already) for this year - the NEC, the ALA, the AKA, the ACA, and the Catfish convention. There are also numerous regional shows/workshops. People who may only be able to travel to one hobby event this year have to make their decision and start planning. If they're going to one of the spring events, they have to decide in the next few weeks. That may be it for their annual hobby budget. Since the AGA doesn't even know IF it's going to have a convention, we're going to lose most of those potential attendees as they make other commitments. This will again cut the potential size of the convention. IF the location chosen is San Francisco, it's not going to be an inexpensive trip for most hobbyists around the country. They need to budget for that. They need to plan NOW.