[Texas] venue bids for PyTexas 2013

[Brad Allen]

The Dec 1 deadline passed yesterday, and we did not receive any other
venue bids. Looks like we should start planning for PyTexas 2013 at
Texas A&M.

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 8:42 AM, Brad Allen <bradallen137 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would you like to organize  PyTexas 2013 in your city? If so, please
> contact me and let me know about your interest. We will need a bid to
> contain documentation about a viable venue location, as well as
> information on who will act as venue coordinator, a list of features
> and amenities, capacity (plan for 100 - 300), costs and requirements
> to utilize the facility, and risks of losing the venue to a higher
> priority event.
>
> PyTexas 2012 took place last weekend at the Texas A&M Memorial Student
> Center, which was a significant upgrade over previous facilities
> hosting PyTexas. The rooms had excellent acoustics, and were sizeable
> enough to allow significant growth. The main two rooms had a
> retractable divider, which allowed dual podiums useful for alternating
> lightning talks at each podium. The open space rooms were also great
> and featured high quality projectors. The facility also had a lot of
> great amenities, including retail stores, art galleries, and a food
> court.
>
> This upgraded facility came with reasonable cost, which required that
> we charge a moderate registration fee ($25 early bird/$50 starting
> Sept 1) in order to rent the facility and provide breakfast + lunch.
> This may have hurt our registration numbers, which were only a little
> over 100 paid attendees. However, I suspect that we could have had
> much greater registration if more effort had been put into publicity,
> along with a stronger program and earlier information about the
> conference features (presentations were very "last minute", for
> example).
>
> We have the option of using the same venue next year, and that is our
> default choice given that it's a known solid option with very low
> risk. However we would like to introduce a process for bidding on the
> next venue. By "we", I mean the PyTexas volunteer organizers, which is
> a sort of "committee of the willing." The current group of organizers
> met on Sunday evening after the conference to discuss roles for next
> year, and decided that this year we need to make the venue decision
> much earlier in the process.  In order to secure availability of the
> TAMU MSC, we need the decision to be made by Dec 1.
>
> If you wish to join the decision making process, you will need to
> volunteer for a significant role in helping to organize PyTexas.
> Please contact me if interested! We currently have openings for
> volunteer positions such as program chair and sponsor coordinator.