[why2025-orga] Early buildup delayed by 2 days? (Was: Request: share your planning & deliveries on the field)

[Manduca]

Hi Juerd,

Don’t assume to much and base other assumptions on that. 
Your portacabin will be build on the 31st! No doubt about it. Boels is NOT an unreliable partner; on the contrary.
I will make sure that they are ready to go at 16:00, as I know how important it is.
Maybe PL can arrange with Lu-thingy-ty that it can be build earlier. And then we will arrange that too.

Regards,
Manduca

> On 13 Jul 2025, at 16:36, Juerd Waalboer <juerd at tnx.nl> wrote:
> 
> Piiindakaas - Marieke via Orga skribis 2025-07-13 10:36 (+0000):
>> https://cloud.ifcat.org/index.php/s/zxPBHt8inZmdY7o
>> Please let me know if there are any challenges, changes or requests for your team. 
> 
> Team:Warehouse needs to build up BEFORE other teams are on site en masse, and needs to be available until the end of teardown. But our own buildup takes time too, and currently there are already 13 (!) teams planned to be on site early. Experience has shown you need toilet paper[1] and other things quite early on.
> 
> The Warehouse exits mainly to assist for buildup and teardown. It's a relatively quiet place during the event itself.
> 
> 
> The rest of this mail has two parts: buildup and teardown. It's a long email but that's because it's a complicated subject due to domino effects.
> 
> 
> ## Buildup
> 
> Early buildup would have to start on Sunday, not Friday, given the current constraints.
> 
> The portacabins are in the planning as "16:00", but from Manduca we heard "not earlier than 16:00" because that part of the terrain would not yet be available. Assuming Boels sticks to their "things will show up at some point in time between 7:30 and 16:00 and we won't tell you when" from before, that means that realistically, we should then be prepared for that happening end-of-workday Friday, i.e. Friday 16:00. For us, this means going into full contingency mode.
> 
> All margin for error is then used up early on, and we start buildup with stress levels peaking. We've had that before and we would really wish to fix that.
> 
> This shifts our 2200 kg danish trolley delivery to Saturday, which is probably nigh impossible (or maybe just very very expensive) planning-wise with the big truck transporter. So we'd need to have them delivered on Thursday or Friday to a temporary location (a big tent, pref. Heaven). That makes everything so much slower, and moving 2200 kg of stuff more than once is terrible. Ironically, it also means that we'd need quite a few angels to do that heavy lifting when we can't have many on site yet. Or it needs to be done by forklifts when those, and their drivers, are in limited supply. So this will take significantly more time than planned, probably until very late Friday evening/night. (Note that I've also expressed in the past that I believe that buildup/teardown work days should be limited to 10-ish hours and not go on during evenings, but in this case we'd be left no choice.)
> 
> We could then receive the shipment from RevSpace with all the stuff we've bought and borrowed (over 10000 € of stuff), much of which MUST NOT be stored in a tent overnight). Assuming the bakwagen can leave on Saturday morning 9:00 it won't be back until 13:00, and that's if everything goes smoothly. After that we need approximately 4 hours to get the warehouse in working order (which is intense work), and by the time we're done at 17:00 the workday is over. (BTW, can we please get a dedicated angel to say "no" to everyone who approaches us during those 4 hours?)
> 
> We'd be able to open on Sunday.
> 
> The first opportunitiy to get a radio, hammer, duct tape, a ladder, a bicycle, or the things we bought for your team, would be on Sunday.
> 
> While you might think that people would just wait patiently until they can do something, but nope, they'll work their asses off and find alternatives, because that's what hacker event buildup crews do. They won't waste time: inefficient work is still more productive than doing nothing and they know that. Because the proper tools are not yet available, they'll exhaust and injure themselves. (But we won't have Team:FirstAid yet.) We've seen that before.
> 
> We know you. You won't wait to take that ladder until Sunday. You'll just grab it because you know where it is and you could use it NOW. But this'll happen while we're still setting up, and we'll have to waste all Sunday trying to recover all the "stolen" items that people forgot to return because they have 42 simultaneous things to take care of. Since the tracking system is not up, we can't just ask people directly. Heck, we won't have had the opportunity to even put the tracking barcode on the thing.
> 
> Although it's going to be painful, this planning would all be fine by me, if the communication to angels had been "come on Monday", maybe Sunday. But it hasn't been. In the podcast, on IRC, etc, people are given the expectation that they can come and help out, but no dates have been mentioned. Those who have looked up the Timeline or have seen this planning, will expect that they can arrive on Friday because that's when early build-up starts and it says at https://wiki.why2025.org/Timeline, in bold, "Buildup angels welcome". There will be food! Sure, but we can't print ingredient lists, or do the dishes. That's not a situation we can cope with for more than half a day, especially not when we have the responsibility of keeping many people somewhat alive-ish and, preferrably, happy.
> 
> This planning only works if the amount of people on site is ACTUALLY very small. Not just on paper and in wishful thinking, but actual "Stay away" communicated beforehand, and "Sorry but you will have to leave and come back later" to those arriving. Widely communicated by PL/Info/Volunteers beforehand, not just by Warehouse while we're trying to set up shop.
> 
> Currently there are 13 teams on site before that, according to the spreadsheet. That's 50 people? 100? And in addition then there are the many people that will just "show up" because we asked them to.
> 
> 
> So I see two possible solutions:
> 
> 1. Somehow have the Warehouse part of the terrain available in time, and have Boels deliver the portacabins BEFORE Thursday 31 August 14:00 (i.e. on Wednesday 30 August if they can't promise morning delivery), so we can stick to our original already incredibly tight and exhausting planning, or
> 
> 2. Start announcing, broadly and clearly, that buildup crew really MUST NOT enter the terrain until Sunday 3 July (or later), unless they're on the very small list of pre-approved people, and start making that list.
> 
> 
> ## Teardown
> 
> Similar: the warehouse portacabins need to be picked up AFTER TEARDOWN, NOT DURING. Warehouse availability is currently listed as until 2nd day of teardown. Sounds like again they're planned to be picked up on Friday of teardown, like at MCH.
> 
> Let's be upfront, clear, and blunt about that, because we have already discussed that amongst ourselves: if the warehouse portacabins are picked up while teardown is still in progress, Team:Warehouse goes home. Even if there's unfinished business. We will refuse to clear out the portacabins for pick-up before teardown's finished, and/or move (part of) the warehouse to another location. What happened at HAR and MCH is not going to be repeated because it was too much for some of us to handle. We need the SHA planning, not the MCH planning.
> 
> Until teardown is done, people will need tools. We can't pack up the last few things until we're done. Meanwhile, stuff will be flowing in from everywhere. We need to put everything in boxes and load everyhing into a bakwagen, while still operating our "desk" (albeit by that time, without an actual desk). These are stressful times with very long work hours and we can't[2] also move shop at the same time. Only when that is all done, the bakwagen can finally start driving. That will probably be on Friday, the last day of teardown, after dinner. Only then will the portacabins be empty. And for a part of our team, the work doesn't end until late that night even in the best case.
> 
> The warehouse portacabins would be picked up on Monday 18 August per previous discussions; please confirm.
> 
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Juerd
> Team:Warehouse
> 
> [1] I know what you're thinking: just have a bunch of toilet paper in someone's car, or ask everyone to bring their own, or just have the toilet rental company bring a bunch - that doesn't take the whole of warehouse! But don't dwell on the topic of toilet paper, that was just an example. Any single item can be dealt with (e.g. the flatterband also needs to be kept separate because it's needed before the Warehouse is operational), but there are MANY such things. Warehouse was designed to fix the scaling issue, and to be built up *just before* the "early buildup" when angels are welcome.
> 
> [2] Well, we could, we've done so before. But this time, we won't, it's just not worth the nightmares.
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