The DrupalCon North American Regional Organizing Group is looking for input from the Drupal community to help pick the location for DrupalCon North America in 2012 and beyond.

To do so, we’ve put together a brief “straw poll” intended to gauge community interest in various cities that have either expressed a desire to host a North American DrupalCon and/or been suggested as potential good locations by our event management company. This list is not intended to be exhaustive, and community members are welcomed to suggest alternative options.

You can make your voice heard by going to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/drupalconstrawpoll now!

The poll takes less than five minutes to complete, and we’ll be accepting responses until 11:59pm PDT on August 4.

After that, we’ll analyze the results that we’ve received and share them with the DrupalCon event management company, which will then conduct an in-depth assessment of several leading cities, weighing factors such as cost, venue availability, and transportation. The results of this study and any recommendations from the Regional Organizing Group will be submitted to the board, who will then make the final determination. Our goal is to have a location picked and begin negotiating venue contracts for DrupalCon 2012 this fall.

While we will be as open and transparent as possible with the community about this decision-making process, neither the list of finalist cities under consideration nor the selected location will be publicly announced until after a venue contract has been signed. This not only provides maximum flexibility when negotiating venue contracts, but also ensures that the selection process doesn’t result in unnecessary competition between different local communities.

We will work closely with the community in the selected city to help make DrupalCon 2012 the best event possible. Finalist cities that are not selected for 2012 will be given strong consideration to host DrupalCons in 2013 and beyond.

This new process is designed to ensure that future North American DrupalCons are run in a sustainable manner that results in high-quality, profitable conferences. Many community initiatives and events are funded with the proceeds from DrupalCon.

The voting members of the North American Regional Organizing Group that are leading this process are Tiffany Farriss (farriss), Cary Gordon (highermath), Emma Jane Hogbin (emmajane), Greg Knaddison (greggles), Earl Miles (merlinofchaos), and Jacob Redding (jredding). Assistance is being provided by George DeMet (gdemet).