>> Fiscal agents are ultimately responsible for the contracts they are 
>> going to be signing. In the case of this conference, that is easily well over $200K.

I think that this is the first pertinent question for the community to decide.  The conference wasn't always this big, this extravagant, or this expensive.  And the costs of running a conference that hosts say 150-200 people, is order of magnitude higher than our current size of 450-500.  It brings with it tradeoffs, and one of them has been the difficulty and exceptional risk organizations take on to run this event.  If as a community, there is an ongoing desire to have an annual mega conference, then it probably is definitely time to start looking for an organization that can provide the type of continuity needed to make the event easier to run and financially easier to manage.  And if we can't do that as a community, it's probably time to rethink our annual conference and scope it into an event that's more sustainable and attractive to a volunteer run community.

--tr