[Lbw2007] Stuff about LBW'07 (long!)

[Spiros Bolis]

Guys (and ladies),

I didn't want to participate in the ongoing thing at the list but I will
sort out all of the misunderstanding and the "information" people are
contributing to the list now that the voting Andy's put up ended.

First of all on behalf of the local organising committee I would 
like to thank all of you that have expressed your appreciation regarding
our proposal and to assure you that we will try to live up the the
Greek hospitallity and your expectations.

A bit about the place:

The place itself is beautiful with long sandy beaches by a steep hill
near the Lasithi plateau (hense the touristic growth in the first
place), with lots of things to do either locally or at a close distance
and I'm sure that everyone coming over with a positive attitude will 
join what will hopefully be the best LBW ever - at least we're working 
on that.

Why there?

We chose the place for the many reasons we stated in our proposal: easy
access either by plane or boat, long history and impressive antiquities,
lots of different activities available - water sports, walking, hiking, 
climbing, touristic infrastructure - excursions, car rental facilities, 
different type of accomodation for different people - ranging from 
camping sites to expensive spas, frequent public transportation, etc.
I should start by saying that I am personally *against* all those 
crawded beaches with umbrellas to rent and people stacked one over the 
other and I can assure you that we didn't have in my mind that "tourist 
trap" kind of LBW when we proposed Hersonissos. That should also have 
been obvious from the list of activities we proposed (and will be adding)
to our list.

Why then?

The University Lab I work for was the co-organiser of a conference there
[1] early October and we had a great time despite the slightly chilly 
weather for us at night (the Greeks could think of chilly daytime peaks 
of 17 to 26^oC [2]). The place was almost deserted (almost no tourists 
at all) that's why we thought we should move the dates a bit closer to 
August: that way we could get what would seem to be optimal conditions 
(relative cheap accomodation, less crowded but still accessible
by charter flights with lots of places to stay to choose from and of
course places to shop, eat and drink). You can add to that the Greek
attendance

I can appreciate the difficulty of those with children regarding the time
period selected but as some of you have already pointed out, there's no
date suitable for everyone. We regret for not being able to accomodate
them but we'll be at their disposal should they ever want to visit
Greece at a different time and will be happy to meet with them.

Why not elsewhere?

Picking another place in Greece (or in Crete for that matter) was
considered but was abandonded early because of the advantages we found
concentrated in Iraklio. We considered that having Hellug members in the
area the event would be held at, would be a serious advantage (local
liaisons know places to go and things to do better than any tourist
guide or seasonal visitors). Herlug - the local annex of Hellug in 
Iraklio - was the most vivid of our annexes up until the ad-hoc BDFL 
graduated from the University or withdrew due to their new parental 
activities. Still, 5 guys living there have volunteered to help with 
the organising and will be holding a meeting there on Thursday. That 
team ties pretty well to the rest of us that are away. Still, I'm
expecting that even more will get involved as time passes.

We also considered that some of you would actually mind a prolonged 
travel by sea for some 10 hours through Pireas (the largest harbour 
of Greece) after a couple of flights from your homeplace and on to a 
secluded, less touristic island of Patmos (for instance) where we have 
an impressive number of members with respect to the population of the 
island. Plus the issues that may arize on emergency situations (some 
islands don't have regular boat lines during off-summer periods, some 
have a sparse distribution of doctors of some skills etc.)


We will get some photos sometime this weekend, one of our guys from
Athens is there doing local meetings with the municipal authorities 
which will be supporting the event and the rest of guys living there
will make sure that everything we will be needing for the actual event 
i.e Internet access will be set.

If it's of any value, I assure you that you shouldn't be worrying about 
a thing (either heat or crowd or ..) except of course from your
travelling details.


We've set up a wiki at:

http://lbw2007.hellug.gr

where we've put some information from previous LBWs plus the local stuff. 
We really welcome your suggestions and we will explore any issues that 
may come up. If we don't know, we'll ask and get back to you.


Thank you for going through that long text (you did read it, didn't
you?),
See you in Crete this summer, (or sooner for that matter Andy ;-) )

Regards,



1. http://www.uoc.gr/ima05/
2. http://www.cretetravel.com/weather_Crete.htm