[Hunt03] Reserving rooms for the Mystery Hunt

[Michael R Korn <mikekorn MIT EDU>]

Hi.

I am about to begin reserving rooms for the Mystery Hunt, and I would like 
your input.  Last year, we were located in rooms 26-322 and 26-328.  For 
those 
of you who do not remember or were not there, these rooms were adjacent 
(but 
not adjoining), contained an MITnet drop, were furnished with movable 
tables 
and chairs, were each about 700 square feet with linoleum floors, and were 
located on the third floor of building 26, a low-traffic area of campus 
not 
too far from the center of the main building.

I'd like to know how people feel about various room attributes, so that I 
can 
reserve rooms that people will be happy with.  Unless anyone says 
otherwise, I 
will treat the following attributes as mandatory:  At least two rooms near 
one 
another, both available for the full duration of Friday through Monday, 
with 
net drops.  The following would be other things that I could try to 
request.  
I'd like to know how important these things are to you.

* Number of rooms.  It seems like we need at least 2 rooms, and no more 
than 
3.  Unless the rooms are small, I will assume 2 rooms are sufficient.  If 
we 
want to set aside a specific "social" room, perhaps three small rooms 
would be 
preferable.

* Capacity.  Last year's rooms both had a listed capacity of 35 persons 
(which 
I suppose corresponds to the number of chairs).  How many people are we 
expecting this year?  Is 30 a reasonable lower limit for the capacity of 
our 
main headquarters?

* Furniture.  MIT classrooms seem to be available with approximately five 
different styles of furniture.  They are:

Movable tablet armchairs.
Fixed tablet armchairs.
Movable tables and chairs.
Fixed tables and chairs.
Conference tables and chairs.

I assume movable tables and chairs would be our first choice.  Are people 
opposed to movable tablet armchairs?

* Location.  It seems like most classroom space is in the main building.  
There are some classrooms in building E51, which is about a five minute 
walk 
(outside) to the main building.  Also there's the issue of high-traffic 
areas. 
 There are some classrooms on the first floor of building 56 which are 
otherwise nice, but people will be walking past there and making noise 
constantly.  Do either of these issues bother people?

* Athena access.  I am willing to let people use my account if we want to 
use 
the Athena computer clusters here.  Nobody seemed too interested in this 
option last year, but maybe it was just because there were no computer 
clusters near our headquarters.  Should I try to get classrooms near an 
Athena 
cluster, or is this not important?

* Adjoinment.  A couple of classrooms at MIT adjoin each other-- that is 
to 
say, they are connected by a door.  This seems preferable, but there are 
not 
very many classrooms like this.  We'd probably have to live with tablet 
armchairs if we wanted to get adjoining rooms.

* Anything else.  Parking, proximity to the Kendall T stop, proximity to 
Mass 
Ave, chalkboards, carpeting, windows, heating systems, restrooms, or 
anything 
else you want to request.

Let the discussion begin.

mike