Conference Proposal

[percy]

Hi Frank, et al,
I have subscribed to the conference lists, so be careful what you say 
about us ;-)

Thanks for the opportunity to provide more information! It took a while 
to assemble it all. Answers are inline, below. If Aaron or I think of 
any further additions to these specific questions, we will send them 
along. Sorry for the huge attachments.

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Percy,
>
> As I believe you know, the OSGeo conference committee is reviewing your
> proposal for hosting in Portland as well as a proposal for Victoria.
>
> I have a few questions to help in my evaluation. It would be helpful if
> you could subscribe to the dev at conference.osgeo.org mailing list and
> cc: your reply to the question to the whole list in case any of the other
> committee members are interested in the response.
>
> 1) You provided a listing of hotels, but it is hard for me to judge room
>    prices without a lot of research.  Basically I would like to know if
>    some of these are inexpensive, and if so how many inexpensive rooms 
> are
>    likely to be available.  If not, are there hostels, or perhaps unused
>    dorm rooms that might be available for lost cost accommodation?
There are quite a few cheap housing options. For example a quick search 
on travelhero.com turned up 35 properties in Portland that were in the 
$0-75 range, and quick perusal of these showed alot near the $50 sweet 
spot! The Convention Center is very centrally located, and public 
transit is great here. So even if your cheap hotel is some distance 
away, you can still get around quite handily.
Additionally, bike lanes are quite good nearby. Those who were at OSCON 
will remember me zooming back and forth from CC to PSU on my bike 
everyday to teach.

We have some housing options at PSU in our University Place for 
$70/night, I'll look into dorm options if you'd like. We are an urban 
university, and as such tend not to have "dorms" like most people are 
used to...

There are two hostels in Portland, they should be booked well in 
advance, as they tend to be full a lot! If we are chosen as the 
location, I can contact them immediately and see if there is any chance 
to reserve a block of rooms somehow.
>
> 2) How many workshop rooms do you think you can provision with computers?
>    Are there computer labs of computers that can be used at the 
> universities,
>    or perhaps the computers can be moved over?  Basically, what is 
> your plan
>    for provisioning workshops with computers?
Good question. We have labs at PSU that I use for teaching that have 
computers ranging from 24 (capacity of 49, with room for two at each 
computer) to 40 (kinda crowded, but still a good room). We also have a 
public access lab that has around 100 computers. At the time we are 
proposing for the conference this is a very LOW USE time, so we could 
probably use it. Again, I can secure this if we are selected.

Another idea that Aaron came up with is to have FreeGeek provision us on 
site. They are a local non-profit that recycles computers for low income 
users. It's a VERY cool group, and they install Linux distros on the 
computers, and people can volunteer time there learning about how to 
assemble computers in exchange for a free computer after donating X 
hours. In this case I guess we would set up our own wired network, 
because the old ethernet cards are cheaper and more likely to be in 
these machines. In the end the rental we pay FreeGeek (freegeek.org) 
would be used to give these computers away to the needy.
>
> 3) Does use of the conference center tie you to particular catering
>    contracts?  How much is the wireless internet service at the
>    conference center. My concern is that some conference centers offer
>    reasonable prices for the space, but lock conferences into particular
>    deals for extras like wireless or catering that are quite expensive.
>
Boy, you were right on this one! Exclusive catering through Aramark. PDF 
attached, you can post it to the conference site if you'd like.
They told me three different wireless packages, attached is what they 
sent. Bottom line looks like $13 per IP per day for wireless if the show 
provides it. If we make the attendees buy it themselves they can do 
metered ($6/hr in one minute increments), or buy it by the day ($12 for 
24 hours). This could end up being our first executive decision :-)
> 4) Do you have a sense of how many local volunteers you are likely to 
> be able
>    to recruit for support in workshops, registration desk, and other 
> similar
>    tasks?  Perhaps paid students?
>
We have had success for smaller conferences in giving students free 
registration in exchange for volunteering for some period of time. This 
time of year is pretty low-key, so lots of students would probably be 
available for $10-12/hr. We could undoubtedly get some volunteers from 
EcoTrust, Metro, etc. I think we probably would consider some sort of 
professional support for a conference of this size! Perhaps a hybrid of 
professional and volunteers could be worked out. Maybe use a 
professional registration service at the least. No need to re-invent 
THAT whole process!
> Thank you and the proposing team for the excellent proposal.
Our delight! 
-- 

David Percy
Geospatial Data Manager
Geology Department
Portland State University
http://gisgeek.pdx.edu
503-725-3373

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: SMTelecomWirelessB06-07.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 18610 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/conference_dev/attachments/20061206/9d30ec29/SMTelecomWirelessB06-07.pdf
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ARAMARK Menus 6-02-06.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 5343179 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/conference_dev/attachments/20061206/9d30ec29/ARAMARKMenus6-02-06.pdf