>This was the second year in a row that the conference started on Mother's Day. Now, those of us with wives and small children know how important it is to our wives to be treated nicely on Mother's Day because the kids are just too small to do it. My wife was quite annoyed that she had to do all the cooking, cleaning, and kid-chasing because I wasn't there.

I had a chat with Shirley about this. She doesn't plan to use Mother's Day again.

>Secondly, if you are going to hold a conference at a family-friendly resort, why not make it at a time when the whole family can enjoy it, like a few weeks later when the kids are out of school?

That's a little tricky, though. School gets out many different times across the country. I'll bet your kids are out in 2 weeks or so, but mine has school until June 11. Many of the other schools around here close even a week or so later than that.

The problem with getting into the end of the school is that people have a lot of places they have to be then. If the Palm Springs DevCon had been a year to the date after it was (or if the following DevCon had used the same week), I would have missed it for my son's HS graduation.

I'd prefer to see conferences get out of May and June entirely. They're just too full of end-of-school-year closure events (concerts, shows, awards programs, etc.).

Tamar