On 09/10/2007, Tom Holden thomas.holden@gmail.com wrote:

I'm at Oxford so I could potentially be of some (limited) help if people were serious about Oxford. (But I don't have that much time so I'm afraid I'm not volunteering to be the sole Oxford coordinator...)

I'd also point out that choosing Oxford over London on cost grounds is probably a false economy. Oxford is very expensive these days. (I'm paying £115 a week for my single, non-en-suite room in student accommodation and conference guests can expect to pay a premium.)

Ha! I pay a shade over double that for a monthly rent in the suburbs, but I am on perhaps the most freakishly cheap lease in the county*.

This is probably the biggest problem, and I think perhaps enough to make it impractical. Oxford is no cheaper than London in practical terms - and, indeed, may be more expensive over all participants once you factor in the smaller pool of cheap accommodation to draw on.

On the other hand, a few years I tried to arrange for Jimmy Wales to come and speak at the Oxford Internet Institute which both sides seemed keen on at the time, (though for one reason or another it never happened), so potentially there might be enough academic interest to get a few things for free.

Mmm. I'm not sure how much clout there is for the organisers, but in my experience the conference side is quite separate from the actual academic "oh, we like those people" side, so unless you rope them in early on...

(The decentralised nature may also be problematic here. Would you need to cosy up to a college as well as the Internet Institute?)