Re: [Debconf-team] Online rooms booking systems
Le mercredi, 23 janvier 2013 11.47:59, Giacomo Catenazzi a écrit :
> On 23.01.2013 09:01, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote:
> >> After looking at all those, I think we should try to adapt hoteldruid to
> >> our needs; the fact that it is already in Debian is certainly a plus
> >> (even if we might need to fork it to suit our needs). I will do a rapid
> >> intent at configuring it with something similar to LeCamp accomodation
> >> options as discussed and report back.
> >
> > So I have now setup an instance on a server and clicked around, created
> > different rates (for categories), rooms, assignment priorities and rules
> > (so that early birds get the smallest rooms first, etc).
I should have written "so that, for example, the early birds get the smallest
rooms first, etc", sorry.
> > I have now acquired the conviction that having a well-configured
> > hoteldruid will be of great help for the rooms/beds registration,
> > assignment and billing.
>
> I'm really not so sure.
>
> I see the following problems:
>
> - the allocation algorithm: the small rooms are may not be the better
> one: if we full the small rooms, but we have only few people on some of
> the biggest room? I don't think we will "sell" out all the available
> place (and on the all days). Consider also that many people don't attend
> the whole DebConf.
Allocating small rooms first was an example. You can leave out any automatic
assignment and move people between rooms before and after the "reservation" is
confirmed.
> - for many people the people in the same room are more important that
> the number of people in the room (especially on big rooms).
> So how can people choose to share the same room? We cannot ask one
> person to book the room for the other friends at the same time.
Why not ? That's definitely possible, similar to when you book a room for 4 in
a hotel (afterall, hoteldruid is a software to manage hotels).
How were we doing it with Penta ? With a comment in the registration form.
Hoteldruid registration allows free-text comments. It's not harder.
> - special arrangements (handicap, gender, age, etc.) are common.
I don't see an issue (or, to be more precise: I don't see a worse issue with
hoteldruid than I see one with Penta) with that. Actually, I'm almost sure
hoteldruid can enforce a "male-only" room or building.
> - Registration, payment date or receive payment date? Note also we
> opened the registration some day before the announcement, so people
> reading the minutes will be advantaged (but they always was good beta
> tester).
That's undefined as of now.
> So I think that manual allocation will do a better (and fairer) job.
> Possibly we can implement a lot of rules in the interface, but I don't
> think it is the way (complex = less transparent = possibly less fair)
I can agree with you here. I still think hoteldruid will be a great help when
doing the rooms allocation: if you leave out any automatism, then it's just an
empowered "text-file in git".
> Maybe we could (instead of allocating a specific room) give a "4 people
> room guarantee" (e.g. such person will have a 4 people or
> better/smaller room), etc.. Then manually we allocate rooms (and
> possibly in a better way: we have all the data at end of registration
> period), taking into account the special cases, the preferences and the
> "size guarantee".
That's possible with hoteldruid.
> So, maybe it is handy to handle such stuffs also with room allocation
> tools, but I think it is easier to go on the other way: adding simple
> room allocation to a conference orga tool.
Well, hoteldruid is here _today_. Okay, maybe tomorrow as you'd need one day
to actually enter the different types of rooms, link pictures and plans to
them, put them in different categories, etc.
> To conclude: I don't think automatic means more fair.
Let's re-paste what I wrote:
> > I have now acquired the conviction that having a well-configured
> > hoteldruid will be of great help for the rooms/beds registration,
> > assignment and billing.
This didn't include any "automatism", on purpose. What I'm only saying after
having actually _tried_ hoteldruid is that it can be _helpful_ to manage the
rooms' management in LeCamp, as we _know_ in advance that not handling
different categories (and gender requirements, etc), will cause frustration
and anger.
To conclude: I think we can get 85% of what we want for rooms management in
two days worth of work with hoteldruid. On the other hand (no offense meant
here), we don't know yet if we'll work with Penta / Frab / Zookeepr (which I'm
also currently trying to deploy) for the "conference orga tool", for which a
"simple room allocation" addon would need to be coded.
Cheers,
OdyX
Reply to: