Well there will certainly be decent social spaces in the accommodation, with common rooms with sofas and gardens with deck chairs and the space for a marquee. Other than booking the smaller rooms as dedicated social spaces the possibilities for social spaces at the Town Hall are a bit limited beyond the foyer. If people are in lectures for most of the day is just having good social spaces near the accommodation (5-10 mins walk from the town hall) sufficient? Or, an idea that just occurred to me, we could book out G&D's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G&D%27s_Ice_Cream_Cafe> &D%27s_Ice_Cream_Cafe ) the Cafe/Ice cream parlour almost across the road from the Town Hall. I'll give them a ring. As for transport, someone had said they were going to investigate hiring coaches and getting sponsorship from a coach company, has anything happened on that? I personally really do not think relying on public transport would be that bad though, particularly if we had people in Wikimedia T-Shirts ushering people in the right direction at either end. I'm not sure that by hiring a coach we could ever provide a service as good as this: http://www.oxfordbus.co.uk/main.php?page_id=24 (Every twenty minutes during peak hours, every half an hour most of the rest of the time, except in the middle of the night when it's every 2 hours.) The rail link from Birmingham International is also very easy. I get the impression that a lot of the transport flaws with Alexandria were down to communication. Tom From: wikimediauk-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Cormac Lawler Sent: 29 July 2008 17:04 To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimania Oxford 2010 Tasks + What is it OK to offer the OII in return at this stage Thanks for this, Tom - those numbers sound fine. (And btw, my numbers were simply suggestions.) Also, we used the main hall for talks other than keynotes in Frankfurt, 2005. Social spaces are really key, and I'd like a bit more detail on how many people can comfortably hang around the foyer area you mentioned. Bear in mind that these are possibly the most important spaces of the conference - where people can hang out, show each other their Cool Projects (TM), chat face to face (always a buzz). Drinks such as tea & coffee would be good to have in continuous supply (as we had in Taipei), which is one of the other criticisms of Alexandria - and one of the recent suggestions is to get sponsorship from a drinks supplier like Coca Cola or Starbucks. I should point out here another of the criticisms of this year which was the transport to the venue - ie the lack of an international airport in Alexandria, and the somewhat less than ideal shuttle arrangements from the nearest international airport (Cairo). This will be a serious challenge to Oxford, and would be something I would put a lot of thought and work into in order to make Oxford a serious practical contender. I would suggest that leaving people entirely to public transport will not be good enough. Cormac On 7/29/08, Tom Holden &lt;thomas.holden(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Here are the Town Hall's numbers, copied and pasted from an earlier e-mail (updated now we know about the balcony): Main Hall: 500 + 242 on balcony Assembly Room: 200 Old Library: 120 Council Chamber: 105 Long Room: 70 Court Room: 43 St. Aldates Room: 40 Plowman Room: 30 Panel Room: 30 And then 3 other smaller rooms, and 1 not suitable for presentations. This comes close to your req of (1x200, 2x150, 3x80) particularly if we use the Main Hall for talks other than just the opening closing ones. It would be fairly easy to get more medium sized rooms in other buildings (e.g. college/department lecture theatres) were we to decide that was necessary. The alternative if we don't like either this or the split room main talk suggestion is to book either just the main hall of the Town Hall and Exam Schools, or the Sheldonian and Exam Schools. The latter option would enable us to accommodate a truly gigantic conference with rooms of sizes 1000, 2x450, 250, + 14 rooms of sizes 10 to 120. As for catering and social spaces: I imagine dinners at least would be provided in whatever college we're booking up and perhaps lunches too. The college would also provide social spaces for the evening. During the day we could have drinks stands in the foyer of the Town Hall/Exam Schools or a marquee up in Exam Schools quad. Remember though that we are bang in a city centre, so people could leave the building for 2 mins and come back with a drink and a baguette from a shop. Tom From: wikimediauk-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Cormac Lawler Sent: 29 July 2008 15:50 To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimania Oxford 2010 Tasks + What is it OK to offer the OII in return at this stage On 7/28/08, Tom Holden &lt;thomas.holden(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well there certainly are larger venues than the town hall in Oxford. (Though the town hall may be able to accommodate more than 500. Their website suggests both 500 and around 750. I've sent off a clarification e-mail about this.) The Sheldonian can seat up to 1000 and the Playhouse can seat 613. Using both of the two 450 seating rooms at Exam schools is another possibility perhaps. We could have cameras and projectors in both rooms, and take it in turns between having a live video feed from the 1st to the 2nd, and a live feed from the 2nd to the 1st. (This would obviously only work if there were going to be multiple speakers in the talk.) Breaking up a single session between different spaces would make for a pretty impoverished experience, in my opinion. (If I understand you correctly.) Just to be clear on what we need - we need a large theatre/room that holds *all* delegates (say, 700) for openings/keynotes/closings; then we need a range of medium-sized rooms that hold groups of people (eg. 1x200, 2x150, 3x80) for presentations; then we need a communal space (or several spaces) where people can mingle, chat, display posters, have coffee, etc. In addition, we will probably need somewhere to eat communally - this wasn't provided for in Alexandria, but it has been one of the criticisms of the conference raised in its wake. Cormac _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l