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Re: just a little OT: online meeting coordinator sought



On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 10:31:33AM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
> also sprach Kevin Mark <kmark+debian-user@pipeline.com> [2006.02.24.0341 +0100]:
> > A=list of people
> > B=1/2 hr time slots that all people can meet
> > C=number of contigous time slots for meeting
> > D=combinations of B that can satisfy C, where D < B
> > E=D where all people can attend, where E < D
> 
> He, looks good.
> 
> > then what to do if E contains say 2 time slots, where slot1 total score
> > is say 2 and slot2 total score is 12
> > 
> > need 1 hour for meeting
> > 2006-02-20:1000-1030: total 2
> > 2006-02-20:1030-1100: total 12
> > should you schedule the meeting for 1000-1100?
> 
> If that is the best choice, yes. I suppose this is case where
> individual importance comes in. If e.g. the project leader cannot
> make 1000 but 1030, maybe it's not a good choice; if just "some
> others" aren't there the first half, that's okay.
> 
> Maybe it's too much to ask the tool to make a decision. Maybe it
> could just give a list of possibilities, sorted by the sum of
> products of attendants and their importance, and list the actual
> attendants and missing people for each to let someone make the
> decision?
> 

The problem seems to be to have similarities to matching buy and sell
orders in a securities market. Its nice to think of each invitee to
the meeting being either available or not available at any given time,
but reality is that each person's availability is a function of how important
he views the meeting for himselve with whatever goals he feels are
important to him. I see a similarity to that largely unknown market
data, for each participant how big a change in the price would lead to
a change in their decision to put or call, or take no action?

Put this way, it appears that if OP were to come up with a viable
algorithm it would be far more worthwhile to apply it to the financial
market than to scheduling meetings. OTOH, Martin's suggestion of "just
give the facts" and let the person running the program guess which
option will anger the fewest of his co-workers, seems the approach
that is most likely to actually get implemented.

just by $.02
-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@mesanetworks.net



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