I talked a little about this in another post, but it deserves a lot more thought. When to have the event is going to be very important. It will affect turnout, what kinds of sessions we can do, pricing, and how much time I have to prepare.
If I’m collecting 5¢ cans, it might take me awhile to find 120,000 of them!
Let’s start with an obvious “gotcha”- Wedding Season! In talking with one of the 2014 organizers, she noted that in her area October, May, and June are the big months. September is also popular, according to some articles I found. Here in Austin, it might be a bit earlier, in the spring, but I’m having trouble confirming one way or the other. Then again, being sunny most of the year probably spreads the weddings out a bit more.
That said, we’re not just trying to avoid conflicts with weddings locally, but to minimize the odds of a possible presenter (or attendee, for that matter) having a scheduling conflict.
Another time of year with MASSIVE scheduling conflicts is the November-December holiday season. Aside from significant holy days in a number of traditions, many folks have practical considerations- kids out of school, families to visit, and the like.
I’ve considered January, since many academic folks have a slight reprieve then and people from northern climes might appreciate weather that ranges from just below freezing into what would be considered full-spring temperatures elsewhere. However, January is also “Cedar Season“, when the Mountain Junipers make love with each other and war upon the sinuses of many a human.
So out of 12 months, we’ve already raised serious concerns about 7 of them!
February doesn’t seem to have any major problems (except for the possibility of lingering “cedar fever”), but it doesn’t have any significant plusses either. Most academics are back to class, people are still paying off credit cards from the holidays, and so forth. In my line of work, we call this “The Doldrums” because business tends to be slow. Then again, maybe that’s a recommendation?
March in Austin is dominated by South-by-Southwest (SXSW), an enormous multidisciplinary conference that eats just about every venue in town. There’s also a massive rodeo and another large film festival during the month. The traffic can get bad enough downtown that some folks take a vacation to be away from the area! I’d love to do March, because it’s typically a beautiful time of year, full of wildflowers and such. But it’s likely to be trouble.
April is also nice, though typically a bit more rainy (go figure, right?). It’s also a heavy allergy season.
May and June are prime wedding months and May has tons of graduations. Here in Austin, late May is sometimes Monsoon Season (and sometimes not). While lots of folks are out of school by mid-June, June is also Pride Month for many of our possible attendees. As an aside, Austin celebrates PRIDE in mid-August.
July and August are hot. If you are not used to the Southwest or Deep South, this is not a good time to be out and about- air conditioning is your friend. While we don’t have random stuff melting all over town like Tucson did awhile back, we did have a giant cowboy boot burst into flames. Okay, it was probably a wiring fault, but still. Some tortilla chips totally did spontaneously combust TWICE within the last two weeks, though.
September is wedding season again, and can still be quite hot. Fantastic Fest happens in September, which suggests it might be a reasonable enough time to hold indoor events.
October is back into prime wedding season, and though the weather is usually nice here- Austin City Limits Music Festival dominates the downtown for the first two weekends. The United States Grand Prix and Austin Film Festival eat up a lot of hotels during the latter part of the month. That said, we have a pretty decent Dia de los Muertos event.
And, with that we’re back around to November and December. These also tend to be pretty nice, weather wise. Early November might be less hectic for people, though academics will still generally be in class. By late December we are back into Cedar Season again.
What am I forgetting?
-In Deos Confidimus
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