Re: c14 bid text Hollywood, Ca

My thoughts as a Convergence attendee and frequent committee bid
member  (ie. not speaking for this year's YBOR committee)..

I have a real concern about the presence of bids on alternate venues
prior to the bidding timeframe set-up on altgothic.com and in these
forums.  It's a very slippery slope and one I think will be hard to
control. What's to prevent a committee from starting a MySpace or LJ
_right now_ to pimp their bid for C15?  If those sites are okay, then
why can't I go reserve C15Tampa and start ours up for next year?  I
mean...I'll just use it for 'organizing our plans' right?  I'm not
'hosting' my bid site outside altgothic.com.

In the past committees have 'organized' using private Yahoo groups,
Emails lists, or any number of other private forums. Or, novel
concept, getting together and ha****ng it out over beers at the local
pub.  There is absolutely NO reason a potential bid committee needs to
use something like MySpace to communciate _with one another_ about how
the planning is going.  The only reason for a MySpace page is to pimp
your bid early and get people excited about your bid.  Before this
spate of gun-jumping, any campaigning was done either in person at
Convergence itself or informally _and without details_ online.  (ie.
'yes, Tampa will be putting in a bid' or the like).  This year,both
Dallas and Hollywood had significant ****tions (if not all) of their
bid out in public well before the listed date.  I am concerned that
this trend will eliminate the level playing field the bid process is
supposed to accord.

I should also mention here that during the C8 bid process we (the
Vegas cmte at that time) were told in no uncertain terms that pu****ng
people to register for voting by mail-in was highly, HIGHLY
discouraged and could, in fact, result in our bid being removed from
consideration.  We were even asked to approach non committee members
and advise them of same if they got overzealous in pimping the mail-in
registration to various forums.