Have you ever wondered why this year's NCFR conference is in Minneapolis in November? Or why it's been 40 years since the conference was held in New York City?

Have you heard the stories of the NCFR conferences of the 1940s and 1950s that took place on college campuses in the summer in order to take advantage of the empty dorm rooms to house the attendees? One memorable meeting was held in the summer of 1971 in Estes Park, Colorado. Those who slept in beds were housed in the YMCA of the Rockies. Many of the 800 attendees spent their nights in tents in the nearby campgrounds alongside their family members, who used the occasion as a family vacation. Do you have any idea of the two years in the past 78 in which the conference was canceled, or why?

NCFR began in 1938 as a national conference—the National Conference on Family Relations. Founded by University of Iowa law professor Paul Sayre, University of Chicago sociology professor Ernest Burgess, and New York City Rabbi Sidney Goldstein, that first meeting (PDF), a one-day event, was held at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City on September 17, 1938.

The entire conference took place in one room where the attendees heard 23 national committees present on topics including but not limited to: marriage laws, working mothers, housing problems, juvenile delinquency, effects of divorce on children, predictable factors in the success or failure of marriage, social security, and preparation for marriage in high school and college.

In contrast, today's NCFR annual conferences are attended by 1,000 to 1,300 people and are held over four days with two additional days for business meetings and preconference workshops. There are more than 500 presentations (including posters, papers, symposia, plenary sessions, special sessions, lightning sessions, etc.) each year, plus dozens of business meetings and scores of social and networking events. Planning for this "great family get-together" begins six to eight years in advance with the quest for an appropriately sized and situated hotel.

The NCFR conference is too small in attendance and revenue to command a convention center but too large for many hotels. The perfect fit gives NCFR "the run of the house," that is all the hotel meeting and exhibit space (about 50,000 square feet) and up to 500 sleeping rooms on our peak night, which is usually Wednesday, with fewer sleeping rooms the other days of the conference. You might imagine there would be thousands of hotels in the United States to fit such a conference but that is not the case. When NCFR conference registrants are able to buy out most of the sleeping rooms, the hotel in return gives NCFR all the meeting and exhibit space at no additional charge. This is the only formula that allows the conference to work financially.

Two other factors put significant limitations on destination cities and hotel choices. The first is the room rate. In today's dollars, NCFR conference room rates must be held below $200 to meet the price point of a significant number of conference attendees, including many students, for whom we negotiate a block of rooms that can be shared by up to four people. In 2009 when the conference was in San Francisco, it was held in the suburb of Burlingame, about 16 miles south of downtown San Francisco, where the room rate was more than $100 per night less than in the city. If you attended that conference you will remember that we shut down the conference one afternoon and bussed everyone to the downtown area for an evening out on the town. The busses were compliments of the host hotel, the Hyatt Regency Burlingame, as a concession negotiated by the NCFR staff.

The second factor of primary importance is the presence of an international airport with adequate connecting flights to most major cities in the United States and first-tier international hubs. Many of our NCFR members teach or work at schools located outside the range of a major airport. As a result, they have to fly smaller, commuter airlines to a major airport and then hop on another flight to the conference city. In the case of a site like Little Rock, Arkansas (2008), the lack of flights required a stop in Dallas, Atlanta, or Nashville and then another flight into Little Rock. As difficult as transportation becomes for our U.S.-based attendees, it can be an insurmountable hurdle for our international members. Thus, proximity to a major international airport is critical to meet the needs of members.

The next consideration is date availability of the hotel. For the past three decades, the NCFR conference has been held during November. Squeezed between Halloween and Thanksgiving (two important family holidays in the U.S.) and either before or after the national elections during a presidential election year (every four years), the dates which match up with hotel availability become few. NCFR has considered alternate times of the year, but because our members are from many different disciplines we, like our sister associations (SRA, SRCD, PAA, APA, ASA) have avoided scheduling conflicts. The two exceptions are the Gerontological Society of America and the American Anthropological Association whose annual meetings often overlap with the NCFR conference dates.

As hotel options begin to emerge, NCFR staff are mindful of the number of members in the region and the location's current political and social climate. Board policy mandates that consideration must be given to the presence of NCFR members and a local NCFR affiliate in the conference city and the "alignment of the city, state, and hotel property with NCFR's non-discrimination policy." The non-discrimination policy is included in the NCFR bylaws and says that programmatic and operational activities of NCFR will not discriminate on the basis of any of the following:

• ability and disability
• age
• bilingualism and multiculturalism/English language learners
• body size and condition
• customs and traditions
• educational, disciplinary, or career status
• ethnicity, race, national origin, or cultural identity
• gender, gender identity, and gender expression
• geographical background and location
• marital status, relational status (including singlehood), and family structure or identity
• objective and subjective worldviews and standpoints
• political ideologies and affiliations
• religion/no religion, spirituality and affiliations, and faith
• sexual orientation, identities, and expressions
• socioeconomic status, residential status, social class, employment, and national service

You might recall that in 2012 the NCFR conference was held in Phoenix, Arizona. This hotel contract had been signed in 2007, five years before the conference. Then, in late 2010, new immigration-related legislation and law enforcement practices in Arizona caused concerns of safety among NCFR members. While we were not able to terminate the contract without undue hardship for NCFR, we were able to reduce the guest room rates significantly and address the concerns of members. As it turned out, this conference attracted more than 1,000 participants, and not one incident was reported by our attendees. There are a number of states that would not be considered for hosting an NCFR conference because of current laws that allow discrimination that is in conflict with NCFR policy. However, the long lead time between contract execution and conference occurrence requires ongoing attention to political and social activities in all states.

While I have not specifically addressed the U.S.-centric nature of the NCFR conference, I will say that the conference has been held outside the U.S. only four times, all in Canada, with two in Toronto and two in Vancouver. Travel restrictions after 9/11 have made it much more difficult for international students studying in the U.S. to leave and re-enter the country.

In 2015 several people from Africa wanted to attend the conference in Vancouver but were unable to secure travel visas. It may be feasible to consider locations outside the U.S. for smaller, subject-specific conferences, but at this point we don't have any plans for future annual NCFR conference outside the United States.

There are literally hundreds of other considerations in selecting a conference hotel. I will mention only two. First, to control costs, NCFR brings its own audiovisual equipment and operators to each conference. The hotel allows a significant concession in permitting use of "outside," or non-hotel, resources of this nature. Second, because contracts are signed years in advance, we are mindful of the condition of the hotel and whether it will have to undergo "freshening up" before our visit. If you attended the 2007 conference in Pittsburgh, you witnessed the worst-case scenario. Not only was there a hotel renovation that extended beyond the scheduled deadline into our conference dates, but the Pittsburgh Steelers football team played home games on Monday night before our conference and the Sunday after our conference, one of which was their 75th anniversary celebration. It might have been fun seeing Terry Bradshaw and Franco Harris in our hotel, but it was not fun explaining to our members why they had been displaced from their rooms or why there was sheetrock missing from the wall behind the door.

This year we're back in Minneapolis, home base for NCFR, which is one reason we frequent the Twin Cities every five or six years. A "local" conference saves NCFR the transportation costs of equipment and conference supplies and eliminates the cost of air travel for the 11 staff members who work at the conference. In addition, NCFR membership is relatively high in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, so historically the Minneapolis conference has been well attended and highly rated.

If you're wondering about those two missing conference years, a history of NCFR conference locations, themes, attendance, and program chairs is maintained on the NCFR website. A hint: One of the years was due to a national edict prioritizing train travel for military personnel.

If you're planning ahead, next year's conference is in Orlando, Florida, November 15-19, hosted by the Rosen Centre hotel, a favorite of NCFR members. This will be the third time at the Rosen Centre and the fourth year in Orlando. Join us in the land of Disney and plan to attend NCFR for many years to come. Oh the Places You'll Go!

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