If it's boiling down to East Coast Vs. West Coast, why not just specifically ask that? I'm not trying to be a picky douche here, this is an entirely serious inquiry and a good chunk Devil's Advocate (As personally, NYC would be much easier for me to get to, especially for just a weekend). Going off the initial thread, it seemed like a good chunk of people interested in an East Coast meet up were more inclined to do DC, as NYC is a lot of "Been there, done that" to a lot of the people who tend to make it to these events. I actually have to say, having been to both, I think DC would be MUCH better suited for the general idea of these meetups from what I've seen as an outsider. NYC is really expensive, whereas one can see most of the best stuff DC has to offer on the cheap. Personally, if I was on the West Coast and had to pay for an expensive plane ride out here, I'd want the city than can be experienced on the cheap.
This is close to a year off either way, it's not like we have to have a mad dash to get it narrowed down immediately. Why not just narrow it down steadily, rather than jumping to two cities? See who could make west, who could make east and maybe go from there?
For the record, if the majority wants to stick to these two cities, I'd vote NYC. Circumstantially, the only way I'd make a West coast meetup is if it fell in a very specific timeframe in August, since my brother's going out there anyway and it wouldn't be too much effort to tag along. Not to mention, I've been unemployed for close to seven months now and have nearly given up on finding a job that would give me opportunity to save up enough money to travel to and spend a week in San Fran (And I sure as shit would not fly cross country just to stay for the weekend). Conversely, NYC is a four hour bus ride of less than $20 for me and I can't imagine a reason not to make it short of death in the family or it being scheduled opposite something I absolutely cannot miss.
ETA: Or, what about the consideration of concurrent meetups? Before someone jumps in and makes the claim that would water both down (I remember that being a complaint when we were talking Boston/SanFran earlier this year), Boston was an absolute fucking blast, even though it was only six forumites and a half dozen of my local friends (Also on that line of thought, I assume Camp Eed was a blast with only a relative handful of attendees) and having a Skype set up with a concurrent meetup in SanFran would've been pretty bitchin'. Given, I'd only state this as a potential consideration should the ratio of East Vs. West get closer to 50/50 rather than the current 9:1 ratio.
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