Conference Proposal

percy percyd at pdx.edu
Wed Dec 6 20:11:17 EST 2006


Hi Frank, et al,
I sent this email out this morning, but it didn't get posted to the 
dev at conference.osgeo.org list, probably because of the large 
attachments. I have removed these, and will make them available on my 
website at http://gisgeek.pdx.edu/osgeo2007
I don't have time to pull together something as pretty as Victoria did, 
you'll just see a directory listing for now ;-)

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


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