Re: [Debconf-team] Le Camp Accomodation - Bed selling and professional fee

["Didier 'OdyX' Raboud" <odyx@debian.org>]

Le vendredi, 18 janvier 2013 14.39:22, Philip Hands a écrit :
> Didier 'OdyX' Raboud <odyx@debian.org> writes:
> > The best solution seems to ask potential groups ("attendee" + relatives)
> > to book early and then inform them at a later (but not too late) date if
> > it's okay or not.
> 
> What are they supposed to do with the now-useless airline tickets if we
> tell them we cannot accommodate the guests?
> 
> Alternatively, how are they supposed to decide to come when they don't
> know what the prices will be like by the time we say it's OK?

Thanks for bringing this perpective in the discussion. That's a good point.

> I'd imagine that getting a family in motion is hard enough as it is
> without us saying that there will be an undefined delay between placing
> the booking and finding out if they'll have somewhere to sleep.

I agree that it would be a significant problem; one point I think I addressed 
in my proposal is the fact that the "delay" would be defined. I'm convinced we 
will avoid many problems by communicating the timeline well in advance.

We could try something like "progressively restricting the types of 
attendees", something along the lines of:

	1. April
		Closing of the registrations for "families"
	10. April
		Communication of the confirmed registrations for families.
	1. May
		Closing of the registrations for "partners" (attendee + 1)
	10. May
		Communication of the confirmed registrations for partners
	1. June (or never)
		Closing of the registration for "conference attendees"

The idea is that if you want to come with several people who are not 
"conference attendees", then we'd require you to book very early. With this we 
could manage (by ruling upon the registrations for each category) the number 
of "non-attendees" and their repartition in the rooms. The team doing this 
ruling could also apply a "first come first served" in a given pool of 
registrations if needed.

> I think we need to either decide that families can stay away (or make
> their plans with no help from us), or that once booked they're booked,
> even if we'd prefer that someone else had got those beds by the time the
> conference starts.

I think my (new) above proposal allows that, modulo the time we take to rule 
on the registrations. But we must also make sure that the "once booked it's 
booked" goes both ways: if you book 5 beds in a room for your family, then you 
should also not be allowed to cancel the whole thing late; we should probably 
consider making the "it's now firmly booked" step backed by a payment, not 
necessarily of the full amount), especially for non-sponsored attendees.

> P.S. My family will _not_ be coming to DC13, so no conflict of interest.

Thanks for making it explicit. It doesn't make a difference (for me) as we are 
discussing ideas and concepts, not peoples and situations (yet), but thanks 
anyway.

Cheers,

OdyX