How To Be Tour Sucker (same as checklist from last year)

As far in advance as possible...
    *  Send out requests to potential demo sites
           
          I did this around August 9 or so and that was early enough
          that I got almost all positive responses.  Do it earlier if
          possible (keep in mind that a lot of people go on vacation
          in August and therefore won't be reading their email at all
          for a few weeks).

          The Media Lab is especially difficult to track down, but
          probably worthwhile.  The AI lab didn't respond until the
          second email, both this year and last year.

          Sending mail to large contact lists (i.e. the list listed on 
          the group's website instead of the individual who did it
          last year) is more likely to get you results in the case of
          the media lab/ai lab/etc.

    *  Reserve room (4-231 and 7-131 are popular)
    
          Reservation needs to be made by a SIPB officer with
          room reservation bits.

    *  Delegate Food (xela has often done this, kenta did it this year)

    *  Confirm Speaker (jis)
       
A week later

    *  Send out a followup email to any groups that haven't responded.  If 
       they don't respond twice, they probably aren't going to.

Two weeks before

    *  Delegate posters (60 posters for each round of postering is good)

    *  Delegate the LSC slide if you're doing one

    *  Recruit tour guides.  Six is probably a good number.  Three is
       the minimum.  Remeber that it's good to have enough people to actually 
       talk to the frosh and answer their questions.

One week before

    *  Make sure postering happens

    *  Send out email to sipb-midway-yy announcing tours.  You may
       want to cc it to sipb-midway-(yy-1).

    *  Recruit more tour guides :-)

    *  Send out a reminder email to all of your stops confirming the details.

Day of

    *  Send out a reminder email to sipb-midway-yy.  My personal
       theory is that this is the single most important thing for
       getting frosh to actually show up.

    *  Make a *large* sign/banner to put up where you're going to wait
       for people to assemble (if you are visible enough, you will get
       random people coming up and saying "what is this?  can I come
       too?").  Drop poster/paint from APO is good.

    *  Provide tour guides with some amount of written clue.

    *  Start waiting at the assembly point about half an hour in advance.

After
    
    *  Send thank-you email to the people who hosted stops

Other

   *  Be sure that you're very clear on how you're going to get into
      each location.  Make sure each tour guide has an ne43 key
      and the media lab elevator combo and (if possible) someone to
      contact if they get stuck.

   *  Leave someone behind for about 15 minutes to bring any latecomers
      with them.  That way the main group can depart on time.  

   *  Attendance this year started out around 35.  About 25 were still
      with us at the end of the tour.  It's a good idea to plan as
      though you'll need to divide into three groups of people but
      realize that two may be all you'll actually need.  I'm unsure
      what the drop out numbers during the tour were.  It seems like
      about 5 dropped out at different points, and about 10 punted
      food and stories to stay behind at the Media Lab.