We hold our event at a local college. The way it works is our contact tries to reserve ALL of the rooms in the building because we will end up giving some back as classes are scheduled and it’s the easiest way to guarantee we end up with enough rooms. From a scheduling perspective that means we can plan to use a room, but that room may get taken away (months before the event or the week before) and we’ll move the track to another room on our list. One more reason to delay printing anything that has the room number on it to the day before the event!
It’s a building with four floors, with most of the rooms on floors two, three, and four. This year we pull all the sessions on three and four because we could have them all side by side, a somewhat better experience for attendees.
Except.
One elevator wasn’t working and the other one is slow (actually both are slow when working). Going between the third and fourth floor isn’t a big deal, but when you’re on the fourth floor and debating the trip up and down the stairs to see a sponsor or get coffee it starts to look easier to just stay where you are.
Stuff happens and you can’t plan for all of it. We’re thinking to use the second and third floors next year and only use the fourth floor if we have to. It’s a minor optimization and may never matter, but it’s easy to do, just in case.
