Dave,
A few points:
If a non-hub venue offers dramatic net price savings, fabulous facilities, or
some other strong justification, it makes sense to go there.
Otherwise, a non-hum city forces virtually the entire set of attendees to:
1. Experience an extra flight, each way, with its attendant inconveniences
and
risks (higher risk of lost luggage, missed connections, etc.)
This is a something of a fair point, but if we were to limit our
conferences to hub cities when in the U.S., that would mean San
Francisco, LA, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Washington D.C,
and maybe Boston. There's a trade off. My absolute favorite location
for an IETF these many years was Santa Fe. It was beautiful. Aside
from the conference there was art, scenery, and history, including
Bandelier National Monument and the Sandia Mountains. Santa Fe required
most of us to change planes, land in Albuquerque, and then drive for an
hour or so. In as much as our size permits us to visit such locales,
it's a nice change of pace. And honestly I think we all get along a
little better when we can see and do some fun things together outside of
work.
2. Pay higher air fares, since secondary venues do not have the airline
competition that major hubs do.
This is not necessarily true. Sometimes airfares are actually CHEAPER
for those spoke cities. For instance, I have seen airfares to San Diego
that are cheaper than those to Los Angeles. It's counter-intuitive and
demonstrates that one really has to be some sort of a clairvoyant to
understand airfares, but there it is. My recollection is that the Savvy
Traveler and the Wall St. Journal have reported on this phenomenon.
3. Experience a higher risk of losing access completely, because of that lack
of
airline competition... The primary airline to the non-hub might go on strike,
for example, as (nearly) happened to us in Minneapolis one time.
Minneapolis *is* a hub for Northwest.
4. More generally, secondary venues have less total airline seating capacity
and
the concentration of our 1200-1400 attendees flying in and out close together
usually has a noticeable impact on their flights.
This is unlikely to be a problem, because we're merely the next
1200-1400 attendees that fly in, and in an area like San Diego we're one
of several conferences that will go on at the same time, I'm sure.
What's more, the next 1200-1400 will begin to fly in as we depart. So
the capacity is probably there.
Eliot
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