That would have been and will be, one of my first-stop shopping places!

And I would kindly ask that you not approach venues directly on behalf of NN.  

When a hotel/venue/CVB has multiple people coming to them claiming to represent an organization it makes their job tremendously more difficult because they don't know who is who.  All the while they are trying to be nice to everyone because they want them to book in their city.

Feel free to do research, and pass along specific location for our consideration, but please don't call them up and start discussing specifics.

Here's part of what Nolan posted in the other diary:

We went BACK to the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau and tried to find space that would fit us and there was not any available.  It is very easy for you to make claims that we should have tried harder or whatever, but we need a very large ballroom for main events and many breakout rooms of different sizes for several days in a row.  It is not easy to find that kind of space on such a short notice.  There was none available in New Orleans for summer of 2008.

In fact, the only reason we found space in Austin is because another group canceled their convention around the time we started looking.  It was really a shot in the dark that we got that even got that.

I wasn't involved in this at all, but even I am finding these constant cries of "you shoulda, woulda, coulda, ..." from people who don't know what the NN organizers did try to do kind of annoying.  Now it is true that no one knows exactly what Nolan and the rest of the NN organizers did because they have not produced a detailed report of the process they went through (and such a report might help people understand the process and work for next year in a more efficient manner) but please, people, could we at least begin this discussion by stipulating that the NN organizers are people with good intentions and a modicum of skills?  If they say that they really tried to hold NN 08 in New Orleans and that they tried multiple different approaches that were not successful, can we not immediately assume they must be lying or incompetent?