Conference Proposal

[Frank Warmerdam]

percy wrote:
>> 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...

Percy,

I don't think you need to look into dorms now.  It sounds like there
are some reasonable price hotels and a couple hostel options.

> 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.

OK, this sounds promising.

> 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.

Some of the workshops require reasonably fast computers to be effective,
but this sounds like it could be an attractive option too.

>> 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.

I didn't try to price things out, but from the prices it seems it
is a premium priced catering service.

> 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 :-)

I think we would want to provide the wireless.   I am seeing a potential
cost on the order of 18000 for 350 concurrent ips over 4 days.  And all
that apparently would be narrowed down to one 10MB link!

Thanks for all the responses.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org