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.