[Van-pm] yapc 2006

[Helen Cook]

On Tue, Oct 04, 2005 at 10:02:25AM -0700, David Labatte wrote:
> Sorry I took ill yesterday and didn't come to trees for this "get
> together/planning meeting".  I'm very interested in participating
> though.  Could you give some info about how it went and how others (like
> myself and Luke) might still become involved.

Will and myself were there.  Will had the idea that we could do without
one large room for keynotes etc if we were to stream video from the main
room to the secondary room.  This has its own issues (getting equipment
is not one of them), but makes planning easier.  The magic capacity
downtown is 300 -- finding space for more will require a hotel, but
there are many options for less.

year  paid  location
2005  365   toronto
2004  261   buffalo
2003  163   boca raton, florida
2002  262   saint louis

volunteers need to be added to paid attendance numbers, so actual
numbers of people are higher.  Florida had fewer people because it was
harder for people to drive there; the other locations are very central.
It's hard to say what our numbers would be, since we'll draw more
heavily from the west coast.

In terms of rooms, we were thinking 2 tracks plus a coffee/lounge area,
capacities 250, 150, 100 or so.  

Sfu has appropriately sized space, bcit has one dividable room that
holds 300 max, ubc (not downtown) has tons of space.

Sfu pricing will be $450+$650+$975 * 3 = $7500 for the rooms and
about $10,000 for catering coffee breaks, which is feasible given over
200 attendees.

The php conference was sponsored by sfu cs dept, so they recieved a %35
discount on the price of the rooms.  We need to talk to their industry
liason person about sponsorship.  

--h