Glacetarium 2011

Destination: Reykjavik.
Dates: December 30 - January 13. (We'll be back in time for the Mystery Hunt.)

Description

The Acetarium Retreat 2011 is intended for the friends and inhabitants of the Acetarium to gather, relax and enjoy good company, often in geothermal pools, in Iceland.

Participants are encouraged to bring their project ideas, books, games, and bottles of fine duty free whiskey. We will be working with a local hacker space to hold a series of talks and presentations -- open to the public -- and may also have access to materials to work on cool hardware projects as well.

Useful Information

Be aware of the huldufólk, the hidden people. Skepticism can appear rude.
Tipping is considered rude.
The flats will most likely have wireless Internet there.
In case if there are more than 8 people, we should be able to accommodate. There is an apartment immediately next door to the 8 person flat we are considering that can hold 10. There are some hotels that seem to be comfortable and about the same price.
Rent/hostel fees seem to be between $20-25 (US) per night.
1000ISK is about 5.5USD.
Mystery Hunt will start at noon on 2011/01/14 (Friday).
Apparently, New Year's Eve in Rekyjavik is http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/story/kiefer.s-iceland-fireworks-thrill crazy].

Useful links

Getting There

There seem to be two real options for folks flying to Iceland from the United States:

Iceland Air which flies direct from Boston for $500 and up for a round trip ticket.
Iceland Express which flies from Newark and can be as low at $300 for two one-way tickets.

There may be other options from Europe.

Attendees

Please let us know if you want to come as soon as you find out!

Name	IRC	Arriving	Departing	Status
Benjamin Mako Hill	mako	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Mika Matsuzaki	mika	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Seth Schoen	schoen	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Dafydd Harries	daf	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Christine	spang	12/30	1/8	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Avital Kelman	fiendishx	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Molly de Blanc	mollydb	12/31	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Danny Piccirillo	DPic	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Matt Zimmerna	mdz	12/30	1/11	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Calyx Clagg	??	12/30	1/11	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Erik Garrison	erikg	12/27	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Hilary DelaBruere	??	12/27	1/1	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW
Alex Ose	maalox	12/30	1/13	TICKETED / ROOM MARKED BELOW

Possible attendees: Mad, Chris, Sj, Danjared, Julie, Bernie

Rooms

We have found one landlord with a good deal of space in Reykjavik. He's trying to give us a good deal and seems pretty flexible. Currently the rundown includes three places:

Flat 73: Can hold between 6-8 people in two bedrooms with two living rooms, one of which has a couple beds in it.[1]
Flat 71: Immediately next to Flat 71. It can hold up to 8 people. But it's only available between the 3rd and the 11th.
Guest house: Although it's about a 20 minute walk away, there is also a guest house we can use to hold overflow. He'll rent it for the same per-person price if we can get at least 6 people. Otherwise, it should be a little more, but still affordable..

Please only add your name here after you have purchased your tickets.

Flat 73

We are reserving one apartment place that can hold a maximum 8 people from December 30th through January 13th. This includes a person sleeping on a couch in the living room so ideally we'll get two places and sleep 6 or 7 in this apartment.

Slot	12/30	12/31	1/1	1/2	1/3	1/4	1/5	1/6	1/7	1/8	1/9	1/10	1/11	1/12
1	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako	Mako
2	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika	Mika
3	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth	Seth
4	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi	Avi
5	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine	Christine
6	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf	Daf
7	maalox	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb	mollydb
8(couch)	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny

Flat 71

There is an apartment next door from the same landlord that can hold 10 people that will be available from the 3rd of January through the 13th. As soon as we get 4-5 people who've signed up for this, we'll put a deposit down to reserve the space for the whole period. Please sign up quickly so we can make sure we get it before someone else does!

Since the house is not available until 1/3, the owner said that we can stay at his other guest house (20-25mins away) until the 3rd for the same price. Let Mika or Mako know if you want to rent the place. Please add your name to the list in the next box if you'll need this.

Please only add your name here after you have purchased your tickets.

Slot	1/3	1/4	1/5	1/6	1/7	1/8	1/9	1/10	1/11	1/12
1	Matt	Matt	Matt	Matt	Matt	Matt
2	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx	Calyx
3	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik	Erik
4	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny	Danny
5	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox	maalox
6
7
8
9
10

Guest House/Other Options

If you need a room in the guest house, put requests down here. We'll try to aggregate these and get these to the landlord and will let folks know. We're currently under the impression that we will have plenty of space:

Hillary: 12/27 -> 1/1
Erik: 12/27 -> /1/3
Maalox: 12/31 ->1/3

There are hostels and are other apartments for people that want to come for period from December 30 through January 1st. Folks can expect to pay between US $20-35 per night in shared apartment or hostel. Mako and Mika will not arrange these other accomidation though. Obviously, the bigger the place, the cheaper the per-person/per-night cost.

Costs

The current plan is going to be to pool the total cost, split by the number of total person nights, and then charge people by the number of nights they will stay.

Flat 73: The cost is 1380GBP(about 2200USD) for the entire period which works around to around $20/night/person if the place has eight people sleeping in.
Flat 71: The price is 790GBP/week, 120GBP/weekday, and 160GBP/weekend.

The total costs are GBP 2530 for the two periods in the time behind. With 5 slots fully filled in the second house we will have, the cost will be about USD $27 per person, per night. With all ten slots filled, the cost will be about US $20. This is subject to changes in the GBP/USD exhcnage rate.

Activities

Folks should brainstorm ideas of things they might like to coordinate while there.

I want to read and talk about a few academic papers about free software! (Mako)

Talks

There is a local hacker space (only two blocks away!) that we can probably organize regular talks at. Folks should make suggestions here:

Try out some new talk about Confronting Reality about social science on free software and how we can use it (Mako)
Prison blogging -- a report on the Between the Bars project. (Mako)
Prison nutrition (report on project to teach prisoners nutrition). (Mika)
Geek nutrition (report on a survey of geek eating habits). (Mika)
Reprising HTTPS Ubiquitous and Fragile from HOPE (schoen)