[Foss4g2008loc] FOSS4G2008 Capacities

[Paul Ramsey]

On the capacity issue:

With an assumed attendance of 600+, the 280-seat rooms are not as bad  
as you might think, because the conference is only running 3 tracks  
wide (plus labs and workshops).  So, given an even split of seating,  
each room would be about 60% full, but inevitably there will be  
disparities.

We had a room size distribution of 400, 180, 70, 70 and 60 in our  
five tracks.  Occasionally one of the 70's would "blow out" as a talk  
was far more popular than expected, but mostly it worked alright.   
The 400 seat theatre provided a fairly "intimate" feel, even with the  
high seating capacity.

Running 3 tracks wide on 11 3-speaker sessions means 99 slots for  
presentations (2007 did five tracks wide, 8 3-speaker sessions, for  
120 slots), with some of those ending up in the GISSA proprietary-and- 
local topics.  So the conference will have to be even more selective  
about presentations this year (2007 received over 200 abstracts,  
accepted 120).

On the workshops issue:

I second Dave's concerns about the Workshops schedule, as having a  
"workshops day" makes for a much cleaner overall schedule than having  
them shoehorned around the rest of the schedule.  However, I (and he)  
are very cognizant of the issues with running a large number of  
simultaneous rooms on a workshops day. BTW, why is Monday afternoon  
not being utilized?

I count 8 workshops slots, down from 12 in 2007, so again selectivity  
will go upupup, and workshops were already the most selective aspect  
of the program (36 submitted, 12 accepted).

Paul