From rzeitham@MIT.EDU  Fri Sep 24 12:00:32 1999
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Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 11:51:45 -0400
To: Luke Sosnowski <lukesos@MIT.EDU>, hbriceno@MIT.EDU, grg@ai.mit.edu
From: Robert Zeithammer <rzeitham@MIT.EDU>
Subject: Electronic signup form
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19990922133004.009cc150@po10.mit.edu>
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Status: RO

Hi Luke, Hector, and Greg!

I think that you are now in the process of creating the electronic signup
form for Fall Circus. I have used the output of the Intr-circus form, and I
have a few suggestions on how to improve it. This is not to say I didn't
like the first one! It really helped, and I think Greg did a great job in
setting it up. Here are just a few specific suggestions to make the next
one even better:

1) release date. A staggering 8 out of 10 first signups later canceled. So
while I think trips should be announced as early as possible, the signups
should begin maybe 3-2 weeks before departure (right about now for the Fall
Circus)

2) text-fields (like "driver", "y","n") are hard to deal with in Excel.
Instead, it would be best to just keep everything as binary. So "Can you
drive your car to the circus?" should generate a 1/0 response as opposed to
y/n. This way, taking totals is really easy in Excel. same thing for "Are
you over 25 and can rent...?" , etc...

3) THINGS TO DROP: organizing the bike transportation made everything
significantly harder and in the end, no one went biiking. So drop that
question altogether. Also, I don't see the use of "medical training"
information in the planning stage of the circus, so we can ommit that. 

4) THINGS TO ADD: "Do you have a sleeping bag you can bring?", "Do you have
to leave the circus on Sunday morning?", "what is your mailing address?"
(the address will be useful later for mailing refund checks for
cancellations and such things...). "Please list the activity (hike, canoe,
climb) you definitely want to do during the circus", and "...you definitely
do not want to do".  This last thing can give us an idea about whether it
is worthwhile to bring all the canoes up (during the Intro Circus, only 6
people ended up canoeing while our capacity was 16/day...) and how many
climbing leaders should we bring (I would say 80% of Intro Circus
participants wanted to climb). On this note: it might be a good idea for
the sake of sanity to NOT offer absolute-beginner climbing during Fall
Circus...

This is all, I am looking forward to signing up soon!!

Greg, thanks again for setting everything up!!

Robert

