Miami Winter Conference Moves Forwards (March 6-10, 2004)

America's annual dance music festival the Miami Winter Conference takes places two weeks earlier than usual next year, between March 6-10, at the Wyndham Resort, Miami Beach.

The event will be Miami's first such conference since US authorities introduced the anti dancing nightlife RAVE Act earlier this year and could be significantly affected by the new laws. Last year's event was seriously disrupted by Miami Mayor Manny Diaz who briefly tried to ban the conference's showcase party the Ultra Electronic Music Festival on the grounds that 'at least half (of Ultra's 30,000) consume illegal drugs' (though he backtracked after organisers doubled policing and banned glow-sticks.)

Then in September, Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman Joe Kilmer told local newspapers 'it is only a matter of time' before the DEA use the RAVE act against local clubs.

"First of all, let me say you've not seen the last of the arrests," Kilmer told Ashley Fantz of Knight Ridder Newspapers.

"We have to use whatever we can to continue to keep nightclubs and other places drug free."

The first ever Winter Music Conference took place in 1984, the same year that Footloose was released.
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