LDSTech Developers Conference: What Time of Year?

What time of year would be best for you to attend the next LDSTech Developers Conference in the Salt Lake area? Please feel free to make other comments about the time of year.

I voted for Spring but anytime near one of the conferences would be fine. Being from California, I liked that I could just stay the weekend and attend Gen Conf as well.

Having it near conference was convenient for a lot of people. I can go nearly any time, but seems like that was a good time for getting folks who otherwise might not be able to travel to Utah.

I'm also from California, but find it very difficult having this conference right next to General Conference. For me, it is a great inconvenience. The first conference (due to plane scheduling) caused me to miss the first session of General Conference on Saturday.

Coming from Memphis, I found it helpful to have the tech conference scheduled near general conference. I was able to make one trip and attend them both.

I would be fine with either April or October general conference, though it would make sense to wait until April since our last one was in April.


Kathryn

I wonder if there are enough attendees away from the West Coast to warrant a location change? Would keep things a little more balanced and provide those unable to travel so far the opportunity to attend. Any stats on WHERE the attendees travel from to get to the last one? Perhaps rotate the location or something. Would probably require more church resources to be used though, to fund travel, renting a venue, etc. Just some thoughts...

relaxmosphere wrote:I wonder if there are enough attendees away from the West Coast to warrant a location change? Would keep things a little more balanced and provide those unable to travel so far the opportunity to attend. Any stats on WHERE the attendees travel from to get to the last one? Perhaps rotate the location or something. Would probably require more church resources to be used though, to fund travel, renting a venue, etc. Just some thoughts...

This is an interesting site containing LDS membership distribution by state statistics: http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_lds.html

...and especially this map: http://www.adherents.com/maps/map_us_lds.jpg

As you can see, it makes the most sense to have a West Coast (or better yet Mountain Area) conference in order to have the best chance of a sizable attendance.

However, they had a mini-conference in California a while back that seemed like it was because a few of the CIS leadership was already going to be in the area (I could be wrong on that impression). Perhaps there will be a time where a few of the same leadership will be on the East Coast at some point and could hold something. But I'm sure you can understand that it does have to be worth the time, money, and effort by having enough people show up.

Perhaps a poll could be held in the forums to ask how many would come to a conference held at <some location on or near the East Coast>? My personal guess is that there will be like 5-10 responses in the affirmative, but I would love to be wrong in this regard.

No decisions have been made yet, but next year's developer's conference will mostly likely be in Utah again. However, we are considering a lot of options about remote attendance and even smaller events in different locations.

So the venue and time is similar to last year. The LDSTech Conference is scheduled for THU March 31 - FRI April 1, 2011. Thursday will be downtown Salt Lake at a chapel, and Friday will be at the Riverton Office Building (ROB). We will be sending out communication on this soon, but put those dates on your calendar if you are planning to attend.

thedunsons wrote:I wonder if there are enough attendees away from the West Coast to warrant a location change? Would keep things a little more balanced and provide those unable to travel so far the opportunity to attend. Any stats on WHERE the attendees travel from to get to the last one? Perhaps rotate the location or something. Would probably require more church resources to be used though, to fund travel, renting a venue, etc. Just some thoughts...

We are actually planning to do multiple mini-conferences following our Spring Conference to allow people from multiple locations to come to attend closer to home. The locations haven't been finalized, but we plan to start in the US and expand from there.

thedunsons wrote:I wonder if there are enough attendees away from the West Coast to warrant a location change? Would keep things a little more balanced and provide those unable to travel so far the opportunity to attend. Any stats on WHERE the attendees travel from to get to the last one? Perhaps rotate the location or something. Would probably require more church resources to be used though, to fund travel, renting a venue, etc. Just some thoughts...

The church owns plenty of venues to hold the conference here on the east coast. The Asheville NC Stake alone could handle the conference as long as we could get over ourselves and not need some fancy convention center. Our stake conference has more attendees than the first tech conference. We have an assembly building and a ward building within just a few miles of each other. We could do all the large group meetings at our assembly building and all the breakout classes at the Ward Building (our former stake center before the assembly building was built). I am sure there are many other stakes here on the east coast that could do likewise. I think we need to do the conference twice a year. Once on the east coast and once in Salt Lake. We do general conference twice a year so why not the tech conference. Of course we really should make use of some of our "technology" and broadcast the conference talks through the webcast software for those that cannot attend. Not everyone who is in a tech calling has a job. My husband and I are in school and we have kids. We can't afford to travel and the church does not allow local leaders to help us to travel to conferences like this using church funds even if it would benefit us in our current calling. Something needs to give here so that more people have the opportunity to participate at some level.