[PLUG] Re: [Pdx-pm] We might get OSCON here next year, with your help

Phil Tomson ptkwt at aracnet.com
Tue Jul 15 10:47:02 UTC 2003


On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Colin Kuskie wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 10:25:55AM -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:
> > On 15 Jul 2003, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> >
> > > The Convention Center is designed more for "big main floor" events. That's
> > > clearly not OSCON.  Most technical computer conventions fare better at
> > > Hotel Centers.
> >
> >   I've attended a number of events there, both before the expansion and
> > since then. There are smaller rooms (but larger than what hotels have
> > available) downstairs in the original part and upstairs in the new part.
> > Very nice facilities, accessible by public transportation and probably quite
> > suited to OSCON.
>
> What about hotels/restaurants nearby?  People may be willing to pay $2.50/day
> to go to/from their hotel, but I don't remember there being lots of restaurants
> within walking distance of the convention center.
>

Actually, there are several over by Lloyd Center (especially to the north
on Weidler) which is walkable.  There is no 'fairless square' over there,
though, like there is downtown.  I took a group of Rubyists up to the
Rogue Pub (which would have been a very long walk) by walking
up to PSU and jumping on the streetcar.  It was a free ride since we
stayed within the fairless square.

Perhaps they could have partitioned the rooms in the Marriot a bit better.
Our Ruby talks were packed (SRO and people standing out in the hall trying
to listen in) - we really could have used a bigger room.  Some of
those very long rooms (created from partitioning the Oregon Ballroom) were
only 1/3 to 1/4 full for some talks.  I don't know if those could be
further divided in half or not - they'd have to have an access door on the
other side.   As others have noted, however, in some cases it's difficult
to predict which talks will attract a crowd and what size that crowd will
be.

I'm hoping that they let Matz do a 'State of the Gem' talk next
year ;-)

Phil





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