Please do not wait until the last minute, do start looking at the bids now.
[1]:
https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16/Bids/Cape_Town[2]:
https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16/Bids/Montreal
At the same time, we need to assemble the committee that will lead the bid decision meeting, so that we can have said meeting in the near future (forseeably in January).
For the past couple of years, we've had two meetings, a first meeting where some questions were asked, problems were pointed out, action items for the bid teams were proposed, etc. And a second meeting where the actual decision took place.
I'm not too convinced of the two-meeting format, the committee is composed from a lot of people with very different timezones, and getting them all together for both meetings means a lot of time and energy spent on that, for very little benefit.
Instead, I'd rather have only one (the decision meeting), and have all the other conversation be done over the mailing list in advance.
Forming the committee has been up to now a task performed by the DebConf chairs, and we have agreed that they will do this again this year. They will contact previous committee members to ask them if they are still interested. On top of this, each of the new DebConf teams should appoint one representative to the committee.
Once we have the committee defined (I'd really like to have this happen ASAP), we will need to set a date and time for the decision meeting, which is always a very complicated and tricky, but it should happen in early/mid January. We should aim for deciding and not dragging our feet, and only in case of not being able to decide, postpone to a second meeting.
During the whole time up until the decision meeting day, everyone (those involved in the committee as well as those not involved) should keep scrutinizing the bids to make sure that there are no possible holes.
Please voice any concerns you may have with this now. We will also have a slot to discuss this in real time on the next Coordination Team meeting.