Well there will certainly be decent social spaces in the accommodation, with common rooms with sofas and gardens with deck chairs and the space for a marquee. Other than booking the smaller rooms as dedicated social spaces the possibilities for social spaces at the Town Hall are a bit limited beyond the foyer. If people are in lectures for most of the day is just having good social spaces near the accommodation (5-10 mins walk from the town hall) sufficient?

Or, an idea that just occurred to me, we could book out G&D’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G&D%27s_Ice_Cream_Cafe ) the Cafe/Ice cream parlour almost across the road from the Town Hall. I’ll give them a ring.

As for transport, someone had said they were going to investigate hiring coaches and getting sponsorship from a coach company, has anything happened on that? I personally really do not think relying on public transport would be that bad though, particularly if we had people in Wikimedia T-Shirts ushering people in the right direction at either end. I’m not sure that by hiring a coach we could ever provide a service as good as this:

http://www.oxfordbus.co.uk/main.php?page_id=24

(Every twenty minutes during peak hours, every half an hour most of the rest of the time, except in the middle of the night when it’s every 2 hours.)

The rail link from Birmingham International is also very easy. I get the impression that a lot of the transport flaws with Alexandria were down to communication.

Tom

Thanks for this, Tom - those numbers sound fine. (And btw, my numbers were simply suggestions.) Also, we used the main hall for talks other than keynotes in Frankfurt, 2005.