Thanks, Brian, for taking the time to read over our bid(s). Please find our answers to your questions inline. Let us know which you think we should promote to the wiki. Most of the information we provide in the following is either of temporary nature (status updates) or a more verbose account of what's already there, so in the interest of brevity, we chose to stick to e-mail for a start.
> Costs: > --------- > Germany needs to get a venue cost estimate for Munich. If DE can > get University venue at no cost, their bid looks the most cost > effective. We are waiting for an OK from the university, and if we get an OK, then that would mean free use of the venue. Renting the venue through official channels would be *way* too expensive and is not considered an option. At the moment, the papers are on the university chancellor's desk, which means the decision, which we expect for next week, will be final. Also note that we had a positive decision for the DC11 bid from the same university. There's a new dean, however, but he did seem very open to the idea and is dealing with the chancellor for us. > Venue: > ---------- > Munich and Belgian venues, both seem strong. Heidelberg venue > seems like rooms are on the smaller side, with the largest room > having a capacity of about 70? Please see https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf15/Germany/Bid/Heidelberg#Conference_rooms The two largest rooms (talk rooms 1 and 2) will host 250 and 120 people respectively. Note that talk room 1 is the combination of three rooms, denoted Heidelberg I+II+III on the hostel website, and talk room 2 is the combination of the rooms Berlin and London. We cannot do much about how this is portrayed on the official hostel website, but in case our wiki bid page led you to the above conclusion, please let us know how we could clarify this. While Heidelberg will probably be a little snug and cosy, we'd say it's comparable in terms of space to most previous locations. We'd probably put it somewhere between Banja Luka and Cacéres in terms of available space. It's definitely larger than Argentina, Edinburgh, and Switzerland; and more contained than Mexico and Helsinki. > Network: > ------------- > Munich and Belgium seem adequate. Heidelberg does not. The university of Heidelberg university just across the street has agreed to provide bandwidth, and they are assisting us with connectivity. We are still working on that though. Currently, the plan is to run cables through the Zoo for the duration of the conference. If that fails, we will probably use a dedicated, directed microwave link. So far, we have not gotten in touch with the city of Heidelberg, but there is a non-zero chance to get support from the city to link the youth hostel to the fibre network. However, we'd prefer to save this option until we ruled out the other possibilities. > Overall impressions: > ----------------------------- > German bid seems to be the most developed, but still has major > gaps. (Largely I am most concerned that team is favoring a city > where there are no local team members, and the city where they do > have a strong local team, the venue pricing is not available even > as an estimate.) We are developing two locations in parallel. We nominated Heidelberg as primary choice because at the time of the bid, it had less unresolved challenges. However, this does not make Munich any less likely or attractive and local team presence is an important consideration for us. Heidelberg is reachable from Munich in a reasonable time (3 hours by train, no stops which makes it work time for many of us), but it's true that ad-hoc meetings and quick stopovers won't happen due to this. Nevertheless, since we only have one contractual partner in Heidelberg to handle for all aspects of the conference (except networking, but they're also involved here), and the youth hostel has organised such events in the past, we feel that local team presence is not of prime significance at this stage. At least I (madduck) will be able to relocate to Heidelberg a week or two before the conference to tie up any loose ends. In this context, however, we would like to note that DebConfs have previously not always been staged in places with local team presence (e.g. Mexiko, Switzerland). As for the Munich venue pricing, see above. To elaborate: we will have to hire security and possibly cleaning staff, but these won't be significant factors in the overall budget. We have not sought quotes from cleaners and security companies before a final answer from the university on the venue sponsoring (which includes the security requirements and conditions such as cleaning). However, if desired, we can try to get such quotes within the week. > Questions: > --------------- > 1) Germany: Is the choice of city likely to impact fundraising > success? (Most potential sponsors are in Munich) While some local sponsors might not consider a conference in Heidelberg, most of the local companies operate all over Germany or world-wide and just happen to be headquartered in Munich. We believe that it won't make a difference to most of them. Also, most of us are much more familiar with Munich than with Heidelberg so the sponsor list for Heidelberg is far from complete. Contrary to that, it wasn't hard to brainstorm a list for Munich. We have not started to talk to any sponsors yet, and will not do so until after the bid decision. Surveying local businesses will then obviously be step one and you can expect the list to grow. Moreover, with Conny, we have a sponsoring specialist in our team who's just waiting to be let off the leash! ;) > 2) Germany: What price should the committee consider for venue > costs in Munich? IE: Will the answer to the University hosting > DC be answered before decision meeting? At this stage, we expect to have an answer in time for the meeting. However, we would like to reiterate that the German bid encompasses two locations (with the same team behind both), which was a strategic choice by the team to improve the end result and drive down costs. Especially since we consider Heidelberg to be well on track for a conference in 2015, we have a bit more time to develop Munich and feel like we do not need to push for a decision too hard. > 3) Germany: Why does German team favor Heidelberg? As I said above, at the time of the bid, Heidelberg had less unanswered questions and was generally ready to go. The networking topic seems merely a question of time. Should we manage to solve the questions around venue and catering in Munich, then it's very likely that the team's preference will change. Local team presence does play a role for us as well. > 6) Both: Family accommodations: Will family-rooms be available? If > not, will there be nearby (walking distance) hotels? As shown on our bid pages, there are hotels nearby. Moreover, the youth hostels (in Munich and Heidelberg) have 2, 3, and 4 bed rooms, which can obviously be allocated to families. There are family/baby-rooms at the venue in Munich, and Heidelberg is a contained venue where kids can run around freely anyway, so kids and families will be catered for during daytime in both places, too. For Munich, we have started to look at actual daycare, already. We hope to have answered your questions and are looking forward to more! On behalf of the entire team, -- .''`. martin f. krafft <madd...@debconf.org> : :' : DebConf orga team `. `'` `- DebConf14: Portland, OR, USA: http://debconf14.debconf.org #include <signature.h>
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