The SIPB Computer Tours are held every year, just after R/O week. Their purpose is to give people who are new to MIT a chance to see some of the uses of computers around MIT. (As well as a chance for people around MIT to show off their stuff, and perhaps recruit new people.)
Information from old tours is kept in /afs/sipb/admin/text/tours/, sorted by year; they are well organized and looking at them gives a good idea of the things that need to be done.
Tours are typically run by a member or prospective, who finds the tour stops and guest speaker. This person usually recuits other members and prospectives to help as tour guides, getting food, etc.
For publicity, we give out flier along with the other information at the Activities Midway, put posters up on MIT bulletin board and in all the Athena clusters, and send e-mail to any new prospectives from the Activities Midway. Things we haven't done but could think about doing are taking out an ad in the Tech, or a slide at LSC.
We usually try to have about five to ten stops, with at least a couple at each of the Media Lab and the AI Lab/LCS. We also try to include some IS related stops, like the help desk, or an Athena demo. Jeff Schiller has been our guest speaker for a number of years, and is very good at it. Prepare a short speech to tell people about SIPB (what we do, how to join) and to introduce the speaker.
Planning for the tours needs to start around the beginning of August, with an initial e-mail asking for tour stops.