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I agree with much of what you say. I've been
part of planning national conventions, and am on committees planning bids for
them for 2007 and 2008. That's right, we're already working on a 2008
bid! For a successful convention, a long lead time is a necessity, not a
luxury.
Putting on a convention is a big deal. It
takes A LOT of time and planning. That is exactly my point! It
can't just be thrown together at the last minute in the rush to just "have a
convention". That is what we were looking at last year, and I'm sorry to
say it appears as though that is again what we are looking at this year.
We have a large enough membership that we could
easily rival some of the other nationals. We've actually got a much larger
membership than a couple of them do. Plus, we've got the advantage of
seeing how the other nationals have successfully run conventions. We can
copy what already is working so well for them. For one thing, people
already know the NEC is always in late March or early April, the ALA is always
in late April or early May, the AKA is always on Memorial Day weekend, the ACA
always late July, etc. Bids for the next year are due before the
convention (except for the NEC which is in the same place every year).
Everyone knows that and knows they have to plan their bid accordingly.
We just need to let our membership know
far enough ahead of time and get them more involved. I've got ideas for
doing that but that's for another time and another discussion.
As for "dumping SF", I'm not talking about dumping
them. How can we dump them when we haven't accepted their bid. They
have not put in a bid. I was really looking forward to going to San
Francisco. We've never been there and have always wanted to visit.
But they knew the deadline. They did not meet it. Even now from what
I've seen they don't appear to be much closer than they were at this time
last year. Sure, some folks there have done some ground work. But
how close are they to making a bid? We need to either light a fire under
them to finalize something, look elsewhere (where?), or drop the convention
again.
Unfortunately, no one else has stepped forward
and met the deadline, either. Maybe that was because the "word was
out" that our 2006 convention was going to be in SF. Maybe it's
because no one was interested. I don't know.
I guess what I'm saying is we need to publish the
bidding process. We need to get the word out. Now we should be
advertising that we're taking bids for 2007. This should be in the next couple of TAG's so
clubs know that the availability is out there.
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