Wow! nothing like a bit of competition!So now that we've got the attention of someone passionate at Stellenbosch, AIMS and, presumably UCT, can I ask you all to find venues that seat around 250, and populate the venue matrix please? No response would imply admission of defeat in terms of 'my institute is the most awesome'.
As an aside, I think the info that this off-topic started is epic, and should be included in some sort of leaflet/website educating about what's hot around here. Thanks all for the input so far. I might need to troll you more often.So:
- Jan, AIMS please.
- Hilton, Stias or any/all of the labs above
- Graham: please make a start with Breakwater for permission procedures, I'll contact the events and venues people for numbers and prices.
I've copied the relevant stuff below, you're welcome to do a data dump to my email, and I'll collate it into something to put either on wiki or git (madduck, help here when I ask you please).Please grade the following for your venue(s) as follows: 0 = not suitable, 1 = suitable or may be suitable, 2 = major attraction, advantage,you're welcome to add any amount of detail, I'll make it look more readable in due course.
! 0. Venue
! 1. Affordability
! 2. Good working spaces
! 3. Internet
! 4. Food, Quality
! 5. Food, Quantity, proximity
! 6. Accommodation
! 7. Presentation facilities
! 8. Travel logistics
! 9. Accessibility
! 10. Central (0= summer camp vibe)
! 11. Scenic
! 12. Alcohol friendly
! 13. Site visit yet?Then, following on from Marc's email,
- Bandwidth Barn in Woodstock, and
- the Blackriver Office Park in Rosebank/Obs came to mind.
Blackriver park would score high on most things, is close to UCT for accommodation, and houses the CT branch of the tech innovation agency, a thoroughly useless (in terms of funding) political outfit that would want to be involved anyway. This way we get to mollycoddle them without having to pay them much attention.Bandwidth Barn is awesome too (done events there and I think the whole setup is ideal for debconf), but parking sucks, it's not very safe at night and I'm not sure where accommodation would be.Community Halls have crap acoustics and working with the city is my mortal fear.I'll think about some city conference spots - concern being contractual obligations, they force all sorts of odd stuff on you, and internet may be poor.I agree that a well designed and executed online component will be a must have.Cheers
B