I've never attended a state meeting, but I have attended many, many conferences and trainings in my professional life, as both attendee and speaker. For me personally, I prefer in-person. I've worked from home the last 5, almost 6 years, and I have have learned that remote training is a challenge for my attention span. Obviously, different people learn in different ways. And I do believe there is value in the fellowship aspect of conferences and trainings. It sounds like, state meeting used to be a 2-3 day event... and then (guessing here) people complained about the cost of multiple nights of hotel rooms, and was pretty much knocked down to one day... which leads to others thinking that for the cost involved, there's not enough value to justify attending a 1-day meeting. (Not criticizing either perspective, just an observation.) It's hard to balance the two.
I didn't see any communication about attendee numbers, but I do know less than 5 minutes after the email went out for the room block, it was completely full. Either it was a super small block, or a lot more people reserved rooms that they expected. No idea which, but I had to call and was finally able to get a room reserved.
As far as assignments, it's not going to affect me either way - from what I have seen in our chapter, I'm not going to get better quality assignments regardless of the training I attend, the snaps I get, or any other factor - there's a set group of guys who consistently get the 'big games' and everyone else works blowouts or 6-man. (Not dragging 6-man at all, I love it.) It's not a secret here or in my chapter that I want to move up to NCAA, so I have to work doubly extra hard especially to refine mechanics and keys, that I don't get quality snaps in... In fact, it's entirely likely I'll work 7-8 man NCAA ball (JUCO/D3) before I'll work a 7-man crew in high school. It's tough. It's a PITA. And sometimes makes me want to quit... but I don't. I have dumb goals sometimes, but I stick to them.
Tied to that is the fact that TASO implicitly endorses coaches picking crews, instead of having assigned rotations, and is quite happy with a handful of chapters working almost all of the championship games. They've stepped in to tell a coach, 'Hey, we made a rule that a crew/official can only work one championship game a season, so you need to pick again.' But TASO can't figure out how to tell them 1) Hey, your selection worked a championship game in the last 3/5 years, you need to pick again, or 2) say that TASO has designated X chapter for the 3A (whatever division) championship, pick your crew from that chapter.'
The reality is, the lack of opportunities for chapters to work championship games absolutely has caused some to walk away from officiating. There's no denying that. How many chapters have gone decades without a championship game? I'd love to see a statistical breakdown over the last 5-10-20 years of which chapters had championship games, and how many.) Sure, it's not the ONLY reason that people work hard in this avocation, but if you knew you had a glass ceiling, that could not be broken, ever, because TPTB like the system the way it is, because it benefits them, why keep working hard? For really driven people, that really can be a a dealbreaker. And it's easy to say, well, if that's the reason they left, then they really didn't want to be in this avocation.' And that is such an intellectually lazy argument. Why on earth would someone work for years and years knowing they will be denied the biggest challenge, the biggest stage of their career? Sure some people will do keep on regardless. But if you think parents and mouthy coaches are the only reason officials leave, you're only kidding yourself. Assignment equality (IMO) is easily the 3rd biggest reason, and sadly the one that TASO has the power to improve. Yet here we are... same thing, year after year.
Anyhoo. Off my soapbox.