[HLUG] Linux audio / video special event venue

[Julian Robbins]

Hi everyone

I went over to speak to Polly Robinson, (Heritage Development Worker) at Grange
Court <http://www.grangecourt.org/> in Leominster on Friday, about our
requirement to hire a room and she was friendly and helpful. Grange Court
is set up as a '*Community, Enterprise, and Heritage Hub. It is free to
enter and enables the people of Leominster and visitors to work, play and
learn*' run by the LARC Development Trust. The facilities at Grange Court
as you would expect from a recently National Lottery funded project are
extremely good. The prices are also low too as they do a much reduced rate
for community groups.

The last event we put on, Ben's Open Street Map workshop last year was
attended by 28 people to give an idea of how many we hope to attend, if we
publicise this well.

There are two rooms we could hire :-

   1. The Education room, which depending on how you set up the seating
   will take up to 25-30 people. The room has a large new, wall mounted
   flatscreen touchscreen tv (don't know about linux capability here) which we
   can use to work with. The best bit is the room is only £10 per hour (note
   all the other rooms we looked at started at £14 per hour, ie St John
   Ambulance and the Kindle Centre in Hereford). The room makes an excellent
   training room as that is it's primary purpose.
   2. The John Abel room, this seats up to 60 people is a beautifully
   ornate room but is £25 per hour so out of our price range I think.

There is free wifi access (approx 8MB/s), kitchen facilities where we can
make teas etc, excellent disabled access (as it's a new alteration to an
old building), new lifts etc. disabled car parking right outside, general
parking in Etnam St. next to the Grange, after 6pm. Grange Court is just
off the town centre, with Leominster railway station nearby and is a very
short walk to numerous takeaways on Etnam St, should you feel peckish
before or after the event. Trains take just 11 mins from Hereford to
Leominster and there are about 1-2 trains per hour. in the evening if you
feel like leaving the car behind.

Dates available for Education room are 21/5, 28/5, 18/6. Note the 28/5 is
our usual 4th Wednesday of the month, to keep things simple ....    ;-)

Therefore I think we should book the room, assuming Charlie can make one of
the available dates above.

Just as a note I'm not so keen to use the St John Ambulance Hall in
Hereford, as although the room is central, I had lots of niggling issues
getting the booking sorted out, access to keys, and the alarm ringing like
a maniac as they supplied the wrong code. Plus the wifi code didnt work
either. I think we can do better ..

Thoughts, ideas ... ?

Julian