• LANEventPlanning

Also see LANEvent if you just want to know what's going on and how to join.

Venue

Currently Eliot Dining Hall is being considered as the venue, this was actually suggested by UKC Hospitality. I'm waiting for the Eliot master's assistant to get back to me regarding this.

Update (26/10/05) I need to remove the old updates soon, but there is now a diagram for EDH online, and we measured the EDH tables, they are 180cm in diameter.

Update Spoke to the Eliot Master's assistant yesterday (19/10/05), she was unable to give us a definate booking from Friday evening until Monday morning next term because of the open lectures which they haven't got a timetable for yet and take priority. We suggested booking us in for a weekend and if an open lecture happens we'll just start at midnight on the Friday. Hopefully she will get back to us about this soon.

Power situation - Potentially we will be drawing a lot of power, we need to verify how much power estates can set us up with but estates have said they would set up additional power. Have just poked estates with an email to see how much they can help, sent it directly to Robert Watkins.

Update Spoke to Rob yesterday (19/10/05), he has given his electrician the task of looking at what can be done and hopes to have an answer by Monday.

The venue needs to be: -

• Spacious
• Able to provide enough power to meet our needs
• Next to a kitchen we can use if at all possible

Dates

Update: EDH is unavailable at the end of this term, enquiring about the beginning of next term (14th/15th Jan).

This does make me think we could try a small scale LAN Event at the end of this term as a trial so we can iron out any bugs for the big one - trial one could be very cheap.

Dependent mostly on when the the venue is bookable, the LAN event would obviously run over an entire weekend, starting from Friday evening and ending on Monday early morning. I am enquiring about the weekends of the 10th/11th (The weekend before the last week of term) and the 17th/18th (The weekend after the last week of term).

The latter date would be interesting, it would be bad in that everyone gets kicked out of colleges on the 17th (If memory serves), but it would give us the potential to book rooms for people to sleep in over the weekend.

• I doubt Hospitality would want us in rooms that fast! - OliverCole

Internet Connection

Update: Telabria seem more then happy to let us have a 3mbit WiMAX connection, if we can get an antenna on the roof.

An email has been sent at 21:30 on 10/12/05 to Telabria asking them to sponsor us - the contents of the email is as follows.

Hi, 

I'm writing on behalf of the University of Kent's computing society (CompSoc), we are planning a LAN gaming event at the end of term involving between 50 and 100 users. This event will be held on the University, most probably in Eliot college - we are seeking an Internet connection for the weekend of this LAN event.

As of yet the date is unconfirmed, but we are hoping to have it on either the weekend of 10th/11th December, or the 17th/18th of December. The actual event will run from Friday evening until Monday early morning - that's the duration we would like an Internet connection from.

The University are unwilling to let an event such as ours use their Internet connection because we require UDP packets to traverse the network and their firewall policy completely blocks that - this is why we're contacting you to see if we can reach some arrangement for a weekend.

In exchange for an Internet connection for this short period of time (preferably the highest bandwidth connection you do since we hope to have a lot of users at this event), we will of course advertise you on all of our promotional material - In my opinion you would be hitting quite a key target market, a lot of students who will be moving off campus and looking for an ISP.

I hope we can come to some arrangement which would benefit us both.

Regards,

Michael Barnwell.
CompSoc Officer.

• pssst, its "Compsoc" - OliverCole

  • :P - MichaelBarnwell

• Currently thinking we can put the WiMAX in the Lyons room and use two wifi points to broadcast the Internet between the wired network in EDH. MichaelBarnwell

Promotion

• Has to include Compsoc information
• Should include Telabria information if they decide to sponsor us
• Needs to be done as soon as we get the go ahead
• Decide upon an entry fee, compsoc members should get a discount - no more then £20.
• Need to figure out sign up procedure

Equipment and materials needed

• Networking equipment for up to 100 users (Preferably a several switches with gigabit uplink ports connected to a central gigabit switch - hopefully the costs of which will hopefully be covered by the charges) - does this imply purchasing switches?

  • Half[NS] says he has a mate called Dave who can get us a bunch of Cisco gigabit switches MichaelBarnwell

• Network services, DHCP, DNS, WINS (just to cut down on the broadcasts), etc
• Game servers (if at all possible, will be better then users hosting them on their own computers)
• Much network cable
• Many multiway power adapters (Only one per socket though)
• Power distribution from whatever presentation estates give us
• Rubber padding to go over cables to prevent people from tripping over them

  • This, and the power distribution is perhaps something we could look at renting... cable strips probably aren't easy to borrow for a weekend, we have to have enough, and we won't need them afterwards. - OliverCole

    • Waiting for Estates to get back to my before we think about this stuff really

Cost

• Currently thinking £15 - £20
• Should take deposits of £5

This will need to cover equipment costs, any staff hire, and promotional materials (flyers, etc).

Misc Notes

• Projector would be nice (jam mentioned he could possibly get one)(actually, it was pao, but i probably could - jam33)

• Some users want more then 2 power sockets (Maybe ask how many power sockets each user wants on application form?)
• Need some sign up system, and ability to take deposit
• Group of people will want to sit together, but there should be some form of a seating plan so its not completely crazy
• EDH floor isnt very nice to sleep on
• A web cam on the balcony would be nice, leading to a time lapse clip of the entire thing.

Contacts

• Rob Watkins (Estates manager)
• Ray Allard (Safety - Keynes D Block, 7828)
• Mike Salmon (Safety)
• Lindsay Smith (Sales Director at Telabria, lindsay at telabria dot com, 0845 345 6757)

• TODO - Add Rightguard contact (FanBoy has it)

• TODO - Add Eliot Master and assistant

Health, safety and security

This has to be considered right for the start, a risk assessement should be done as well.

• Cables will have to be secured so that people can't trip over them
• We will have to avoid overloading power supplies.

  • We need a point-by-point plan as to what we do if we do overload it, as it could kill the lights. We need to investigate circuits and see what would be killed, and bring along emergency lighting if required. Having games killed will be bad, but having people injured in pitch blackness is even worse. - OliverCole

    • It's very unlikely we could draw enough load in one go to shut down the whole of Eliot - more likely we'll draw enough to kill our circuit, which will be seperate from the lights (unless we run power cables from the light sockets :P), and EDH has emergency lighting already. - MichaelBarnwell

• Would all the computers there have to be PAT tested?
• Who would be allowed into the venue
  • Will check next time I speak to the Eliot masters assistant if non-university members are allowed
• Badges for all participating and different badges for people visiting maybe so we can have a system for checking if people should be there or should be moving that piece of hardware out of the venue.

  • Its a nice idea... I imagine you want to ensure people only move equipment with numbered stickers matching their personal sticker? The problem is, people might not want to stick them on their cases... - OliverCole

    • If we make the stickers funky enough they shouldn't mind, bescides anyone who doesn't abide we'll just say we can't garantee their computers security. MichaelBarnwell

  • PS, is this really Health and Safety? - OliverCole

• Is the first-aider at reception sufficient coverage in terms of first aid? - OliverCole

  • Theres an all night nurse in Eliot as well. MichaelBarnwell

    • Good point - OliverCole

• Security available from RightGuard at £12/hour, would be useful on Friday evening to control the Mungos rush.

Risk Assessment

Just to get a heads up on this, we will need to fill out a risk assessement form - is anyone able to get a copy of this (preferably electronic)?

• Items to go in the risk assessement form.
• Student union suppose to be emailing us one.