Conference info...

[Steven Whitehouse]

Hi,

On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 19:10 +0100, Ian Pratt wrote:
> > On Fri, 2006-08-18 at 12:47 +0100, Steven Whitehouse wrote:
> > > then it would be a good plan to contact them separately I think.
> I'll
> > > forward the individual replies as I receive them. I wasn't sure what
> to
> > > say on the catering front, so I've requested separate totals for
> that to
> > > ensure that we can see what we are getting on that front,
> > 
> > OK ... I'll see if I can get John's to play ball.  I know for a fact
> the
> > Palmerston room in the Fisher Building can be configured for the
> > roundtable type setting that we use in the Kernel Summit (The tiered
> > seating can be rolled back into the wall) I think it will do up to a
> > hundred, although it will be more cramped than the Congress Centre.  I
> > suspect it's not advertised like this on the conference site because
> the
> > John's conference manager doesn't like the effort involved in changing
> > the configuration.
> 
> I emailed Conference Cambridge right after I got back from OLS. The
> result was pretty disappointing, with only Homerton and New Hall
> responding. I think a centre-of-town College would probably make a
> better venue, if we can find a big enough room. In King's the only room
> big enough is the dining room, but that makes things rather awkward for
> providing lunches/dinners [Colleges generally want to couple hire of the
> room to catering, as that's where they make money]. Trinity or St John's
> is probably the best bet for large conference rooms.
> 
Trinity we can more or less rule out I think. They only have one lecture
theatre large enough for us (takes 150 people) which is very nice, but
its not the "groups of people at tables" layout that I understand is the
preferred choice. Also they indicated that they were already fully
booked for the period concerned, but that might have only been the rooms
and not the lecture theatre - the reply was a bit ambiguous.

I was rather surprised that the old Kitchen and/or the Hall were not
large enough, but I wasn't offered the choice of those, so I presume
they were too small. Trinity claims that their largest room seats only
80 people max. Its a few years since I was last there, so my memory is a
little hazy, but I was surprised that they couldn't manage 100.

I did contact Nick Kingsbury, my ex-supervisor and a fellow at Trinity
and he seemed to think the same, so its not just the conference office.

> If a change of format was considered, the Computer Laboratory has a
> large raked lecture theatre that would actually be pretty good. It's a
> mile or two out of the centre of town, which would create a few logistic
> issues. [Hire a fleet of bikes? :-)]
> 
> Ian
Sounds frightening :-) Though with the change of format, Trinity might
again be possible and the lecture theatre in question (in Blue Boar, so
opposite the main part of Trinity, above the shops) is very nice.

I've still had no further replies from any other colleges via Conference
Cambridge, but I'll post any I do get to the list,

Steve.