> A practical issue is that announcing a venue before there is a contract > in place for the meeting site impairs our ability to negotiate the > contract. We are engineering. But I will break a rule and go there. I don't see that saying "we are considering Hong Kong, Singapore, and Manila" reduces our ability to negotiate in Singapore. Maybe it even strengthens it. But there we go. Looks like sometimes we may need to pay a price to get what we want. The loss on cancelation may be greater than the loss on negotiation. Adrian