[FOSS4G-Oceania] What is our upper limit of registrations?

[John Bryant]

Hi all, profound apologies for adding to the email traffic at a very busy
time, but we need to address rego numbers. We can also discuss at
tomorrow's meeting, but it requires context.

On Monday, with 50 days left, we're announcing our program. We can probably
expect to gain some attention, and a run on regos. At the same time, we're
planning to announce the number of tickets remaining, to let would-be
attendees know how much urgency they should feel.

Right now, we have 172 total registrations (136 actual, plus 36 set aside
for sponsors, students, committee members, presenters). A couple of
committee meetings ago, we talked about upper limits, and agreed to 'watch
and wait'. At this point, though, we need to come to terms with our actual
upper limits, so we can make an informed announcement on Monday.

I think our key consideration is around constraints - what can we handle?

*What are our bottlenecks?*

*The #1 bottleneck: space for lunch & morning/afternoon teas.* The Arts
Hall will be used for catering and the sponsor tables. We'll need to make
sure we have enough space to accommodate all these people. A few stats on
the Arts Hall:

   - total area: 220 sq m
   - total usable space, after sponsor tables and catering: about 90-100 sq
   m (conservatively)
   - capacity, based on 0.5 - 0.75 sq m pp (suitable for mixed
   standing/sitting): ~125-175 (plus area behind sponsor tables, for another
   10-20)

My best estimate is that the room will start to feel crowded once we get
past 175, but we have a few options to increase our capacity.

To mitigate crowding we'll use lunchbox-style catering, so people can grab
their lunch and stand with it, or easily go to other spaces. As a bonus,
this will reduce queuing.

Other readily available spaces:

   - We have 2 nice rooms adjacent to the Arts Hall (rooms 257 & 263), with
   capacity of 48 each, that we could use as overflow seating.
   - We have talked about running Birds of a Feather sessions during lunch
   breaks, could use 257 & 263, or could use room 116 (cap 48) downstairs.
   - There are a number of seating areas in the corridor right next to the
   Arts Hall, with about 25 seats (stools/tables/chairs/benches), and many
   more throughout the building.
   - We have a room allocated to family use, which should be able to
   accommodate ~10-20.
   - If the weather's good, there are many nice outdoor areas where people
   can enjoy their lunch.

All in all, I think even in bad weather, if we really pushed it, we could
potentially accommodate 300 - I would probably be uncomfortable going this
far.

*The #2 bottleneck: lecture theatres.* We have 4 lecture theatres
available, from which we need to choose 3. The capacities of these rooms
are 405, 121, 83, and 81. If we're thoughtful with where we place our talks
(using the community vote as a guide), we should be able to handle quite a
few. I see this as being a secondary concern, after the catering bottleneck.

So, what can we handle? Given what we know, I would be comfortable
recommending that we keep our registrations going until 250. This would
mean that from right now, we would be able to take 78 additional
registrations, beyond what we've already set aside, before cutting off. I
would love to see us welcoming as many people as we can handle.

Thoughts? Are there other constraints we should consider?
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