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.
Should AGA have stuck with the November 2005 deadline? SF has put in a lot of work and it didn't feel right to dump them. Besides, the seemed so close so often. But we can't hold on indefinitely and a cut off date has been set. There's still time for AGA to put on a convention whether SF comes through or not. Will it have things working against it in 2006, including the things you cited? Sure will. The 2006 convention will especially hard to do because time is getting so short. In that regard it has cost us dearly to go this far, this long, without sewing up a deal for 2006.