Stef sent me an email asking about reasonable hotels in London. I passed on a couple I have experience with but I wondered if others have any suggestions (and we should find a place to post that information online, I guess - not sure how to do that with Blogger).
Here are the suggestions I had:
http://www.shaftesburyhotels.com/ I stayed at the "Shaftesbury Premier London Hyde Park" for a few weeks when I arrived in London. This company runs 10-15 different hotels in the same area and I've heard that some are worse than others, so be careful which one you book. That particular one was clean, reasonably priced, and had a decent breakfast included (£89 / night for that weekend). It's not particularly close to the venue, but it's right by paddington station which is convenient if you fly into Heathrow and catch the Heathrow Express. It's a short walk to catch the Central Line to the venue. Free wireless.
http://www.pennclub.co.uk/ My mom stayed there last year and liked it. It's pretty basic but a very central location (easy walk to the venue). It's run by the Quaker Society but is open to anyone. Breakfast is included and is quite communal (you share tables and conversations with other guests). Free wireless.
There are also a number of other boutique hotel companies that operate around that area. Lukas and I both stayed in hotels run by http://www.grangehotels.com/ last summer. They're quite fancy hotels but sometimes have good offers, either in advance or last minute. A number of them seem to be offering rates around £105-125 / night at the moment.
Julian
uksmalltalk@lists.squeakfoundation.org