Bob
This sounds like another of those questions best asked of AMA themselves. All you're going to get here is speculation.
Did you ever hear anything back from them on your Park Pilot budget/expenditures questions?
A. Fixed.
B. I figured to give them a little extra time to answer my email question, seeing how AMA is busy in California in januaries these days.
There are a bunch of reasons to justify any particular location for such an event. Climate, population density, vendor locations and their costs to show up, etc, etc. This just seemed to me to be another of those threads that's going to end up in rank speculation and an excuse to kick the AMA around like a football. One might not get a straight answer out of Muncie, but OTOH there's not going to be an answer here, either
or, we could come up with a great idea
Like taking the exposure, pop density, and climate into account to setup a 3year rotation to "expose" the "population"s across more of the country: LA, TX, & (some southeastern metro). No matter how many times year after year you try to get the same LA folks, you are not really exposed to the Atlanta guys.
Whether or not putting the AMA HQ in the great white north was a bad idea,
there are more unfrozen metros than just LA over & over.
If it is a vendor concern, maybe the vendors might want to try to sell their wares to new folks rather than the same crowd every year. It is my understanding that part of being a salesman is to go TO the convetions, not sit at home waiting for folks to have a convention where I am.