Hi Markus,

>Scheduling a conference is a rather difficult task. From the outside, it usually doesn't look that way, since most people don't go to more than one conference a year, but it really is. Tech Conference holds a number of conferences throughout the year. Generally, we have the May to September/October timeframe available (and July for instance is bad too). Within that timeframe, some 15 (or so...) conferences have to be scheduled. Therefore, we have some 18 (or so) weeks we can pick from. Most of them are bad, because there are NBA finals, the Indy 500, Mother's Day, and so forth. In other words: No time is really good.

Agreed. But Mother's Day is really bad for people with young children. Worse then the Indy 500 or the NBA Finals. For a lot of wives, it's third in importance to a wedding anniversary and Valentines Day.

>On the other hand, Mother's Day has some advantages too. There are only a handful hotels in the US that can handle conferences of the size we are talking about. Therefore, we have to work with the hotel and see where we can fit in. And typically, Mother's Day is a slow weekend, which is especially true for locations such as New Orleans or Orlando. Therefore, we can negotiate much cheaper rooms for you guys than we could otherwise (or organize cooler parties,.... you get the idea... :-)

Mother's Day is slow because (duh!) men who don't want divorces are home with their wives and kids :-)

>Having kids out of school would be nice, but is not a good thing for conference organizers. One would perhaps get some people that would bring the family and would be willing to pay 40 bucks more per night, overall however, a conference organizer would loose a lot of money (and attendees) over a deal like that. In addition, people use the time when kids are out of school to go places other than conferences. (That's why we do surveys...;-)
>
>In general, the idea is to provide a professional environment at a somewhat cool location for the best possible price. 40 bucks more per night adds up, and especially with the current economy would make it very hard for a lot of people to come to the conference...

Fine. Then what is wrong with April? Or June? Just not Mother's Day! Isn't it funny that guys with kids understand this and unmarried people don't? Some day, Markus, some day you'll understand :-)