I've been looking at the University of Greenwich but they're yet to get back to me (despite e-mails, the website form and a phone message), I'll try ringing them again and see if I can get a human being.

I'm struggling on London venues at the moment because of the short lead-in time combined with the cost of London in general. The venues that are big enough for us want absurd amounts of money (more than £40,000 in room hire alone for a couple of places) so the best way with that is either a university venue (all the central ones are lacking in availability but are options should we give up on 2008 and go for 2009) or a hotel who will give us free room hire in return for bedroom bookings.

The problem again is that many of them are already booked but I still have the London Hilton Metropole and Hilton Park Lane to contact. Plus Grosvenor House might be big enough and there's the Renaissance London Marriott at Heathrow.

If we can get a suitable venue, 2008 wouldn't be a problem. We planned the 2007 Eastercon in less than six months and the first three months of that was spent getting a venue. It's also looking rather like there won't be a North American con and at the moment, there's only us and Hungary looking at running DrupalCon in 2008 - I haven't heard anything about Hungary lately.

The Association requires it to be later in the year so I've been looking at September - November.

The announcement of Hungary's DrupalCon also requested proposals for 2009 so time to get back into gear and pick it up a notch I think.

So, European DrupalCon's go in the second half of the year giving us July to December. I was going to list the pros and cons of each month but they all rather balance each other out so - what's the best time for us? Is August bank holiday worth looking at (usually lower rates from business hotels)?

I'll tidy up my current spreadsheet into something coherent and make that available later today.