[Swarmfest2007] Update on SwarmFest

[Steve Railsback]

Hi-

An update on housing for SwarmFest. "University Center" is a dormitory 
in downtown Chicago that serves DePaul and other universities. They have 
cheap rooms available for SwarmFest, so we are making arrangements to 
reserve them. (E.g., single rooms with shared bath are $56.)
http://www.universitycenter.com/conferences/housing/index.html

There is some risk: we have to reserve a certain number of rooms and put 
a deposit of 25% of the reserved room fees down. Then, as the conference 
date approaches we have to put down more of the total fee, and pay for 
all rooms by 10 days before SwarmFest.

Steve Lytinen is seeing whether his department at DePaul can cover the 
initial 25% deposit, but if not we will have to.

This means we will have to keep on schedule and make registration happen 
in a timely way, and be prepared to put some of our money down if needed 
before we collect registration fees.

We can increase the number of rooms reserved as we go, but cannot 
decrease the number reservations after 90 days beforehand (which is 
about 2 weeks from now). So there is a risk that if attendance is much 
lower than expected we will have to pay for the unused rooms.

Currently we're estimating 32 people in single rooms and 16 people in 
double rooms. I'll let you know what our commitment is before we sign it.

I want to make sure the board is aware of this and can comment.

Steve

--
Steve Railsback
Lang, Railsback & Associates
Arcata, California
www.LangRailsback.com