Dan and I have enjoyed a good run of luck with NCDevCon in the past. Sure we've had some blown fuses (no coffee!) and some gaffes with food (anyone remember Meat Option #1?) but overall we've been incident free... until this year.
This year we were excited to announce the date early and blogged, tweeted and blasted emails out to everyone to let them know.
Then we read about the Bluegrass Festival coming to Raleigh.
"The IBMA event annually draws such artists as Steve Martin, Bush and Alison Krauss and Union Station. More than 16,000 fans, artists and music industry professionals attend, with an estimated 8,000-10,000 coming from outside the region, an IBMA news release said. "Uh oh.
The festival is the same week we planned for NCDevCon 2013.
At this point, the Sheraton, Marriott and any reasonable hotel within a reasonable distance to the conference are completely sold out. We'll not be able to secure hotel rooms that weekend at any reasonable price. Starting price 4 months out is $250 - $350 a night, and will climb as we approach the original conference date.
Dan asked his wife if everyone could camp out in their back yard, and she said that would be fine. However, they don't have enough electrical cords to let everyone charge their laptops and phones, so we've decided to move the date to secure a block of affordable hotel rooms.
The new date is September 21-22, 2013.
See you in September!
Dan and Jim