Re: Fwd: YAPC::NA::2004 Call for Venue

[mjd-perl-pm@plover.com]

> > Are there enough affordable hotel rooms nearby?  Having never had to
> > stay in a hotel in Philly, I don't have any idea what, say, the
> > Sheraton University City might charge.
> 
> Hard to say.  Expedia says that a 5 day stay next month is in the
> $100-$125 range.  Not bad considering the hotel in PGH was $95/night
> four years ago.

That's about what it was when I looked into a a year or two ago.  We
also could get a group rate, so it would be the low end of that range,
not the high end.  As I recall, for double occupancy it wasn't a lot
more expensive than the rate that the crooks at Penn Conference
Services wanted to charge.  I considered going back to Penn to point
this out and then decided not to bother.

The other thing that bugged me about Penn was that their conference
services office was very unprofessional.  It's located on the second
floor of a dorm building, and you can't get in without Penn ID.  That
means that if they happen not to be in the office when you arive for
your meeting, you get the pleasure of standing around at a dorm lobby
security desk twiddling your thumbs.  This happened to me more than
once.  In our meetings, they would tell me how much things cost, and
then when we got it on paper there were all sorts of extra costs that
nobody had mentioned.  For example, we'd discuss the cost of renting
video projectors, and they'd quote me a price, and then when the
formal proposal arived the price was twice as much because what they'd
quoted hadn't included fees to set up the projector and remove it
again at the end of the day.  Similarly, they told me the price to
rent meeting room X for Y number of people, and then the formal
proposal price was effectively much higher because rental and setup of
chairs was much higher---even though the chairs were in there already.

The big problem with Penn as a venue, in my opinion, is the lack of an
appropriate-sized auditorium.  The only one they have is in Meyerson
and it was booked the year we were looking into it.  PCS was offering
Irvine, which is not very well-suited to the kinds of talks we want to
have.  Penn's engineering school has Heilmeier hall, which seats about
250, which isn't enough for a plenary session.

On the other hand, one reason we were down on Penn last time was that
the conference would have had to be held in several different
buildings: Irvine, Houston, Meyerson, etc., and as I recall we were
afraid that that wouldn't work.  I think the experience of WUSTL shows
that it probably would work OK.  It's been a couple of years, and
maybe the PCS people are not such losers now.

But If I were going to do it again, I would talk to a lot more
colleges.  Penn has the benefit of being in the middle of town, but
that's not a strict requirement.  What about Arcadia, Bryn Mawr,
Haverford, Lasalle, Rosemont, St. Joseph's, Swarthmore, Temple,
Ursinus, or Villanova, just to name a few off the top of my head?

If someone wanted to lead the effort to get YAPC to Philadelphia next
year, they could count on my wholehearted support; I would do whatever
I could.  But I'm not going to lead it myself, because I'm too afraid
that that would turn into me doing everything alone, and also because
I'll be away for several weeks of the next two months.

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