Change of venue for November TC meeting

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

Hello UBL TC members and observers,

As noted in today's Atlantic UBL TC call, the rooms at Sun
formerly reserved for our TC meeting in San Francisco 1-5 November
2004 are no longer available due to Bay Area corporate real estate
consolidation.  I have arranged instead for the meeting to be held
at Sun facilities in Santa Clara (near San Jose).

I will as usual provide detailed directions and suggested hotel
info later on, but people planning to attend the meeting should be
aware that you *may* wish to fly into San Jose Airport (SJC)
rather than San Francisco Airport (SFO).  SJC is much closer to
the meeting location, but SFO has much better direct international
connections, so in general, people traveling from locations in the
U.S. will probably prefer SJC, while people traveling from
locations outside the U.S. will probably prefer SFO unless there
happens to be a convenient flight from their point of departure
into SJC (for example, there used to be one direct flight a day
into SJC from Narita, though I don't know whether this is still
operating).  SJC has very good domestic and international
connections through Chicago, and flights into SJC often cost less
than those into SFO.

The bad news is:

 - San Jose cannot compare with San Francisco as a place to have a
   good time, and it is virtually impossible to get around without
   renting a car.

 - We will have to carpool for lunches at a nearby shopping center
   (but since most people will have a car, this should not be
   difficult).

The good news is:

 - The meeting rooms I've reserved in Santa Clara are vastly more
   comfortable and quieter than the ones we had reserved (and used
   last year) in San Francisco.  The Santa Clara facilities were
   built in the 1930s and were completely refurbished as
   high-level corporate meeting spaces when Sun acquired them a
   few years ago.  So white boards and phones and so on are not a
   problem.

 - Security is not exactly nonexistent, but since these rooms
   are commonly used to host people from outside the company,
   getting in and out should be a lot easier than it has been at
   either the San Francisco or Menlo Park Sun facilities.

 - Both the plenary room and the break-out room have external
   internet access (like what we had in Copenhagen).  Some of you
   will find this a major improvement.

 - There is lots of parking.

More later as we approach the date of the meeting.

Jon