[Lugcomms] CodeCave 2011!

[Paul Wayper]

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Hi all,

After talking with Peter Miller[1] at CodeCon[2], and other people over the
last year or two, I've decided to put together a similar style of event. For a
weekend, we all go off into the bush, far from the internet and other
quotidian distractions, and write code, eat and drink well, and share great
ideas. What's the difference? It's in a cave.

Well, not literally. The location that I'm aiming for is the Yarrangobilly
Caves[3], an area of limestone caves and other scenic delights about seventy
kilometres due south-west[4] of Canberra, although it's about two hours by car
because the direct route goes over the Brindbella mountain range. As well as
the caves[5], there are bushwalks and (perhaps most importantly) a thermal
spring pool to soak in after a hard day's slaving over the laptop. We would be
staying in the Yarrangobilly Caves House[6], a historic homestead of the
region offering bedrooms for up to sixteen people, kitchen, dining room,
lounge, verandahs, and (also importantly) power.

Interstate visitors who didn't want to drive all the way could be picked up
from Canberra airport or bus stations and ferried to Yarrangobilly on Friday
evening, coming back to Canberra on Sunday in time for flights home or other
onward travel. For those that wanted it, interstate or local, I would do
catering for the whole weekend at a fixed price and with a roster for jobs. If
we had the whole place booked optimally it would be about $60 per person for
the weekend, the complication being that the rooms are not all single - there
are some bunk beds and some doubles. They also only book by entire wings (9 or
7 people), so the fewer people the more it would cost per person, in certain
ratios depending on requirements. At this stage the earliest we could get a
booking for a weekend is late May or early June.

If you're interested in coming to this, please drop me an email. I really need
to get firm bookings, preferably by the end of February, to have any chance of
getting the accommodation booked and the pricing finalised. I wouldn't run the
event if the cost was more than $100 per person for the accommodation, which
means that it won't run with less than five people. There's also no way to
accommodate more than sixteen people, so bookings would be limited in date
order. Please also email me if you've got suggestions, because a lot of the
planning is flexible at this stage.

This will also be posted to the CLUG list and the Linux Australia email list.

[1] http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/
[2] http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/codecon/index.html
[3] http://bit.ly/hdMWGe
[4] http://goo.gl/byKPE
[5] http://bit.ly/gx28Ij
[6] http://bit.ly/hvzFBx

Have fun,

Paul

(P.S. Sorry if the environment.nsw.gov.au links don't work correctly, they
seem to require session tokens which stuff direct linking up.)
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