[Chicago] Tradeoffs (was: Acceptable transit times?)

[Ted Pollari]

On Dec 7, 2006, at 10:53 PM, Peter Fein wrote:

> I wouldn't consider the Red Line trip from the hotels at Grand to
> Loyola 'major'.  There a tradeoff here b/w convenience to talks &  
> the rest of
> the city.  In the limit, we could just have the talks at the hotel,  
> but in
> that case, any old Mariott anywhere in the country near an airport  
> would do -
> we can do better than that.


I guess the issue, just like you said, comes down to cost vs.  
location vs. convenience

We're shooting for universities in the city because they'll be  
cheaper than a hotel conference space in the city, but they lack on- 
site housing... but they're in the city and that's a big draw and a  
big plus for various activities.  This is what PyCon 2003, 2004 and  
2005 did.  The commute from housing was 30-40 minutes for some and as  
short as 10 for others, from what I recall.

The alternative for keeping costs down is a suburban hotel/conference  
center.  They're convenient because they're all in one and they're  
cheap because they're out in the burbs... And the downside is that  
they're not in the city.  This is how the current Texas location is.   
The only time I was in the city limits of Dallas was on the way to/ 
from the airport (the actual hotel is in Addison)  While that's not a  
great thing on the face of it, it's good for community building and  
getting people to meet one another.

I mean, ideally, we'd probably love to have it at a swank hotel  
downtown with conference space there but the costs for this are  
likely well out of the budget for PyCon (the room rates would  
certainly be above the stated targets), so as I see it, we need to  
compromise in one of the two ways above and both have been done by  
PyCons past, so both seem entirely valid to me and neither should be  
ruled out off the bat.


-ted