Dear All,
Welcome to this week's update for the 2009 QA Hackathon.
ACCOMMODATION
Rooms have been reserved at the Jury's Inn [1], and to keep everyone updated on what we have/haven't booked, you can now see the current allocations on the Accommodation [2] page. If you're planning on staying and haven't told us when and where you'll be staying, please update/add your entry.
TRAVEL GUIDE
A travel guide is now online, and will be expanded further if necessary. See the Directions Guide [3] page to see the appropriate links for your journey.
HACKATHON MAP
Borrowing heavily from our YAPC::Europe Conference Map in 2006, we have an updated embedded Hackathon Map [4], listing the venue, hotel, pubs, restaurants among other things, to help everyone get their bearings when they arrive. For those who previously attended the YAPC::Europe in 2006, you will hopefully remember your way around the city centre :)
TRAVEL TEAMS
As many will be travelling up from London, we have created a page for the London Travel Team [5]. Feel free to add more Travel teams to the Travel page [6], with details of meetups. The London Travel Team, will be heading up to Birmingham on the evening of Friday 27th March. Venue meetup suggestions and train times are currently listed for those wishing to co-ordinate themselves.
AIR ARRIVALS/DEPARTURES
For those travelling by air, we've also added a couple of pages to help us co-ordinate any pickups if we can. Add your flights (including airport codes) where applicable to the Air Arrivals [7] and Air Departures [8] pages.
EVENT LUNCH
As mentioned previously, the venue will be providing lunch for us each day, and we need you to notify us of any allergies or special dietary requirements by the end of today (Tuesday 10th March).
SPONSORSHIP & FUNDING
Unfortunately we haven't had as much sponsorship and funding as we would have liked. We suspect the current economic climate has been the biggest impact, but we are still looking for further sponsorship, for at least 2 people who would like to attend if they can be funded. If you can suggest anyone for us to contact, please add details to the Sponsors page [9] on the wiki, under Suggested Sponsors, or contact at the email address below.
QUESTIONS
If you have any further questions, please email us at organisers@qa-hackathon.org.
LINKS
[1] http://birminghamhotels.jurysinns.com/
[2] http://qa-hackathon.org/wiki/Attendees
[3] http://qa-hackathon.org/wiki/DirectionsGuide
[4] http://qa-hackathon.org/static/map.html
[5] http://qa-hackathon.org/wiki/LondonTeam
[6] http://qa-hackathon.org/wiki/Travel
[7] http://qa-hackathon.org/wiki/AirArrivals
[8] http://qa-hackathon.org/wiki/AirDepartures
[9] http://qa-hackathon.org/wiki/Sponsors
THANKS
Many thanks to our sponsors who have donated funds to help us put on the event, Birmingham Perl Mongers for underwriting the whole event, to $foo Magazin and Nestoria for providing funding, and to PROCURA B.V. and Booking.com for funding their employees to attend.
More news soon...
Thanks,
The 2009 QA Hackathon Organisers.
