Re: [Debconf-team] Accomodation - Room capacity limits
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:
> On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 10:36:52PM +0100, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote:
>
>> It was pointed out several times, that filling the largest rooms at Le
>> Camp to their maximum capacity might be unacceptable. I agree with this
>> and propose to fill the 3 largest rooms (all rooms in the "Large
>> sleeping-bag" category) only to 2/3 of their capacity, even if we have
>> more people applying for accomodation in these rooms.
>
> I find this proposal to be fatally flawed, driven by a misguided standard of
> "fairness" to attendees.
>
> A person's tolerance for additional roommates follows a logarithmic curve,
> not a linear one, and each person has their own multipliers. One person
> will be uncomfortable with but accept three roommates, but will consider
> five roommates unacceptable; another person will be ok sharing a sleeping
> space with 12 people, in which case it's very unlikely they will object to
> sharing a space with 13 (or 14, or 16) people.
IMO you are focusing too much on the number of roommates. Other factors
influence the quality of the rooms as well. The 5-8 person rooms with
bedding still provide much more space per person in a more modern room.
To get a fell of the rooms, see the pictures [1] [2].
And you can call that misguided but my priority is to provide more equal
comfort to everyone and to improve the situation for those that
otherwise would have to endure the worst rooms.
>
> So the goal here should not be to try to even out the number of people per
> room, the goal should be to try to even out each attendee's comfort level,
> with the understanding that there will be *quantum* differences in what
> individual people will be comfortable with. Some people will accept
> communal accomodation, and some will not. You can declare that you're going
> to make it "fair" to all attendees by only offering communal sponsored
> accomodations; but the effect of this "fairness" is that some people will
> choose not to attend DebConf at all as a result; and when that happens with
> people who are at the top of the to-be-sponsored list, it diminishes the
> conference as a whole.
>
> So I posit that:
>
> - The attendees who are willing to accept communal accomodations at all are
> not going to be bothered by having only a small amount of personal
> space. Underselling the communal rooms reduces the capacity for the
> conference but brings only a marginal comfort benefit.
I disagree here. At least for me personally it would be quite a hughe
difference if I'm in one of the big rooms fully packed or with 1/3 empty
beds. So underusing the communal rooms IMO makes quite a difference.
> - Attendees who are *not* willing to accept communal accomodations will
> represent a significant portion of the attendees, and their needs should
> be factored into the planning.
Don't forget that they can still choose to attend the conference and not
be hosted at Le Camp. And if it's really a significant portion of the
attendees then it should be easy to organize car sharing too.
> - The distribution of attendee preferences *may* mean that it's better to
> undersell the medium-sized rooms (to make them small-occupancy rooms,
> with a max of 4 people each). But we can't know *for sure* if this is
> true until after we've collected the registration data, and then only if
> we make sure we ask this question.
At least for the rooms with bedding, that all provide much more comfort,
I thik it's an unwise use of the space to not fill these rooms.
>
> As requested at the sponsorship IRC meeting, I've prepared a wiki page that
> lays out an alternate accomodation model:
>
> https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf13/Pricing/Strawman
>
> This proposal allows for a sliding scale of small-occupancy vs. communal
> rooms, in response to the actual data that comes in from registrants. At
> the high end, it accomodates 294 people ("Proposed occupancy (high)"), which
> is only 5 less than Gaudenz's proposal. At the low end ("Proposed occupancy
> (low)"), it accomodates only 237 people - but if that's the configuration
> that actually matches the requirements of the people we want to sponsor, I
> insist that this is the correct usage of the space, *not* a usage that packs
> more beds with people we wouldn't actively seek to sponsor.
To look at it form the other side we should also think about how much
pickyness we want to support for sponsored attendees. After all they get
their rooms and food for free. So they probably should be prepared that
this is not a hotel.
>
> Now, in terms of opening registration, I don't think we need to actually
> figure out which of the two of us has more accurately predicted the
> distribution of preferences among registrants. The only thing we need to do
> is make sure we *capture* those preferences accurately, so we can make an
> informed decision about room allocation once the herb team has said who
> should be sponsored. This implies adding a single yes/no question to the
> registration form for sponsored attendees:
>
> [ ] I will accept sponsored communal accomodation
To accurately capture the preferences of attendees we would have to ask
more fine grained questions than this. With this question we still don't
know if this means 4, 5, 6, or even 8 persons per room are still
tolerable or is a sleeping-bag room is also tolerable with fewer people.
And how would room allocation work for non-sponsored people?
>
> (possibly with a link to a more detailed description of the room
> configurations)
For sure we plan to have more detailed descriptions with photos.
>
> If the distribution of responses is really biased as far to "yes" as
> Gaudenz's model implies, then we can even go ahead with that room allocation
> model. But if, as I believe, there will be a lot of people we want to
> sponsor who will not attend if communal accomodation is their only option,
> then we should follow the data and allocate rooms accordingly, instead of
> trying to fit the attendees to a preconceived model.
I'm not per se against a model where at registration time we just try to
capture attendees "tolerance level" and let us later decide how to
exactly allocate the rooms. But in any case I think to be fair attendees
need to know at reconfirmation time, which room the will get. And doing
all of this before reconfirmation just puts a lot of work on the
"accomodation/front-desk team". At least does that will have to do this work
should agree to this procedure.
>
> I would also note that this is of course a stepwise function. If person n
> in the sponsorship rankings requires small-occupancy accomodation, and
> sponsoring them has the consequence that the total number of beds is reduced
> by 4 and persons n+1..n+5, all of whom would accept communal accomodation,
> are not able to attend, we should be smart about weighing the value of
> having 5 attendees vs. 1 attendee who are all ranked relatively close
> together. But by the same token, if persons n..n+3 all will only attend if
> they can get small-occupancy accomodation, I don't think it makes sense to
> skip over them and sponsor persons n+4..n+9 in the same space just because
> it "fills" the space better.
>
While this sounds quite logic. It seems like a lot of manual work to do
the right allocation according to these criteria. And it's still also
quite subjective.
Gaudenz
[1] Picture of the worst dorm room:
https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/File:Simple_dorm.jpg
Other similar rooms:
http://www.groups.ch/images/haeuser/zusatz/K-0806-5485-8_20091202051441.jpg?mt=1259769403
http://www.groups.ch/images/haeuser/zusatz/K-0806-5486-7_20091202040201.jpg?mt=1143457317
[2] Picture of an 8 person room with bedding:
http://www.groups.ch/images/haeuser/zusatz/K-0806-5489-4_20100624112851.jpg?mt=1277371600
http://www.groups.ch/images/haeuser/zusatz/K-0806-5488-8_20091203093431.jpg?mt=1143461686
The 4 person rooms are similar but smaller with less beds. All the rooms
in Passerelle and Beausite look like this. The Rooms in the Zwingli and
Peupliers buildings are older and provide a bit less comfort.
--
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
~ Samuel Beckett ~
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