Sorry, this report is rather short, mainly because we arrived there
during a weekend and couldn't check everything.
Edingburgh report
Short summary:
==============
Edingburgh showed us three different possible venues. Since we visited the
city on a weekend, we could inspect one venue only partly and one not
at all.
All of the proposed venues would need seperate accomodations in nearby
hostels or hotels; enough hostel and hotel capacity is available nearby,
since all proposed venues are located in Edingburghs town center. It
takes a bit more than five minutes to walk from the proposed hostels to
the venues. Beeing in the town center means although, that
infrastructure in the meaning of pubs and other shops, are very good ;)
Arrival via train, Edingburgh airport, or the two Glasgow airports is
very easy; connection to the town center are good.
Detailed report:
================
First proposed venue: Royal college of Physicians (?)
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That is the venue, we couldn't visit at all. We just could walk arround
the outside of the building.
This would be the most expensive option; it seems it is not completly
capable of hanlding disabled persons; some of the local team have qualms
about that venue ("nice for a wedding, but I'm not sure about a
DebConf").
Something like a chill out place (like the playground before the dorms in
helsinki) doesn't seem to exist nearby in a workable fashion.
Second proposend venue: Edingburgh college of Art (?)
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This is the location we could visit partly. It is an "L" shaped
building; a cantina is in the larger part of the "L", hacklabs would be
in the small part, the area in between has some grassland, which would be
a nice "chill out place". We couldn't see the conference rooms from
inside, but pictures show rooms of workable size.
We didn't spoke with anyone there, just saw some rooms, which wouold be
nice hacklabs. So many questions, like network and extended opening
hours are still open and would need to be answered by the team.
Till the day we visited it, it was in heavy use for some art thingy, so
the building itself was dusty and smelled a bit like cast.
Third proposed venue: Student union building "tiviot"
-----------------------------------------------------
The thirds proposed venue is "the oldes building of an student union
ever". As such it is used, but has a special kind of atmosphere.
Conference rooms in all sizes are available, as well as some bars.
Opening hours are limited, but local team thinks it shouldn't be a
problem to have them open for us as long as we like.
Building seems to be fit for disabled persons; network would need to be
done by ourself. Capacity in the cantina is limited; so people couldn't
eat all at the same time.
It is the cheapest venue proposed in Edinburgh, but we would need to pay
additonal money for extended opening hours.
Conclussion
===========
Renting a building which we didn't saw from inside is for me out of a
question, so we can scratch out the Royal physicians college; especially
since not even all of the local team consider that building to be a good
choice.
So we stand with the tiviot and the arts college. Personally I would
prefere the tiviot, the building of the student union. I consider the
special atmosphere of that building highly inspiring. However, the
limited opening hours of that building are a major disadvantage. I would
to see that problem solved, and that building would have my vote.
We didn't met anyone from the arts college to ask questions about, or
show us the conference rooms. This gives me a bad feeling, but since we
made the mistake to arrive there during a weekend, I can't blame for
that. What we saw satisfies me; especially the grassland courtyard
between the buildings.
If the opening hour problem at the tiviot would be solved it would
consider it a drawn; but right now I consider the arts college a bit
supperior (even so I still have this bad feeling about it).
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