[H-GEN] Summary of LCA bid talk 21/04/07

[Russell Stuart]

First of all apologies.  I didn't arrange for the
normal notification to be sent out for this talk,
and as a consequence it came as a surprise to some.
Sorry.  (It was mentioned in the previous LCA bid
summary, but the procedures are there for a reason 
and I didn't follow them.)

As promised in the previous LCA summary, this talk
consisted of going through Wiki RecentChanges and
the discussions on General, giving some back ground
to what has happened.

Venue:
  QUT has formally said they want to be the venue
  for the bid.  Alternatives to QUT were to be
  discussed at this Humbug meeting.  However no
  alternatives were proposed, so the choice of
  venue is now final: QUT it is.

Events/Partners Program:
  I added a summary of requirements for Partners 
  Program to the wiki.  The bottom line is other 
  bids barely mention it, and it appears to be 
  self funding.  As a consequence the only relevance
  it has to the bid is finding someone willing to
  organise it should we win.

Events/Open Day:
  Ditto.  However it would be nice if we have said
  we have some verbal commitments for exhibits -
  eg an exhibit for the UQ scramjet.  It would be
  nice if someone could follow this up.

Events/Professional Networking:
  I investigated a couple of venue's and turned up
  blanks.  Mark Ellem suggested Mt Coot-tha lookout.
  Looks appropriate to me.  Mark has promised to
  get pricing by the end of the week.  If no other
  ideas come up then Mt Coot-tha it is.

Events/Dinner:
  I investigated a couple of possibilities, turning
  up two appropriate ones.  Cost looks to be less
  than $80 per head at both.  No decision on which
  to use as yet.

ArtWork:
  We don't have artwork!  Opps.  My bad.  Several
  people have made verbal suggestions and I have
  not followed them up.  Don't let that stop you
  from pursuing other alternatives.  I need help
  here - artwork ain't my thing!

Budget:
  Nothing done as yet.  I will chase up past LCA
  expenditures so we can get started.

Bid Document:
  I have dissected two of the bid documents (Sydney
  and Melbourne) and put up the results on the wiki.
  I will do the other one (Hobart) this week.  The
  two I have done contain a lot of fluffy words and
  not much detail.  I did the exercise primarily to
  make sure I have not missed anything contained in
  those bids.

Team:
  And that exercise revealed one glaring omission.
  To have a successful bid you have to team of people
  who have agreed to loose part of their lives to
  LCA 2009.  Whats more you have to _name_ those
  people in the bid.  These people are not the gofers.  
  They are people who say they will be responsible for 
  making a certain part of LCA 2009 work.  If they are 
  real clever they will delegate themselves out of all 
  parts of the job except getting the kudos at the 
  end.

  To get this started I guess we need a list of jobs.
  I will post this with more info on how to volunteer
  by next week.

That's it.  The next LCA summary talk will be on 
19/May as I have prior commitments for 5/May.  By then
we have to of had most of the loose ends covered, so
you will be hearing more from me via this list in the
mean time.