Steven,
There could be some advantages to clashing with the main confeerence, One I see immediately is allowing the main conference to go for longer (5 days, 3 streams), if there are two mini confs on at the same time at the conference all week it is like having 5 streams but with two of them being miniconfs.
I guess this begs the question:
* Was there a reason for the conference to go for 3 1/2 days? * If one extends the conference to a whole week, how would that: - affect pricing - affect scheduling - affect staffing requirements (where staff may be volunteers but you know what I mean) * Is a main conference of 5 days and coordination of, say, 8 mini-confs, a bit much to ask a volunteer organisation to run?
When does the conference become "so large" that it stops being "grassroots"?
DSL