The booking deadline for accommodation at BiCon is now less than five weeks away. We need to get all residential booking booked and paid for by 8th August so we can get our booking in to the conference centre and sort out flats for you all.

If you want to share a flat at BiCon with specific people, this is also the deadline for you to let us know. After that we may try to deal with your requests, but unless they are access related we can't guarantee to have the time, since we'll be rather busy by then…

In fact we are rather busy right now, so here is the simple step by step guide to sorting out the flat of your choice at BiCon and making it easy for your harrassed BiCon team.

1. Find a group of up to six people (including yourself) who want to share a flat. If you don't have six we can still try to put you together, but we will make our own decisions about who to put in with you
2. Make sure that you and all of the people you want to share with have booked and paid for BiCon
3. Make sure that you have all booked the same kind of accommodation – we can't mix Standard and Ensuite bookings
4. Check if any of the people need a ground floor or wheelchair adapted flat, and make sure they have let us know
5. If you have a preference for a quieter or a party flat, make sure your group agree
6. Email email address removed with your list of people, and any requirements you have. If you copy in everyone in your group it will make it easier for us to a)know who you all are and b)see that you all agree to the list. This is especially helpful if some of you asked for different flatmates on your original booking forms
7. Chat among yourselves about who is going to bring the corkscrew (optional)

Other things we can do include:

• making sure you're not in the same flat as someone you especially want to avoid
• arrange to put two people in rooms next to each other (for groups of more than two we can try but can't promise, cos it gets a bit too complicated)
• putting two well organised flats near each other (again, for more than two it gets a bit much for my poor brain)

For any of these options, or to update your preferences about party/quieter/ground floor flats, email email address removed

Things we can't do include organising flats based on dietary choice, gender, age, hobbies, or anything else that we've not asked about on the booking forms. So if you want a vegan flat, or one for people who want to go for a run at 6am, you'd be better off trying to organise it yourself.

So there you go – let the jigsaw puzzle commence!