The M.F.A. graduates presented their shows in the CAVE environment. The first decision regarding the CAVE exhibit was the number of people that these exhibitors wanted to present to and the frequency of these groups. The agreed upon number was six people per every 10 minute slot with a 10 minute break per hour. This break would accomodate any backups or unforeseen difficulties experienced. As this was not a major conference showing, the exhibitors agreed that smaller, intimate groups fit the atmosphere that they wanted to create. In addition, they did not want the chaotic confusion that could result from over- booking the CAVE. Overall, this was achieved and there were not any major delays in group tours.
The actual scheduling of groups was tricky and I learned to do this from some old email that detailed CAVE scheduling from VROOM. The lack of any formal documentation of this process prompted me to include some details from my experience. The easiest way to schedule 5 groups per hour with an hour break was using a spreadsheet dividing each hour into the tour slots. A further difficulty in this scheduling came from the fact that each group had to go through two preliminary stages before being admitted into the CAVE. For simplicity, these two stages were also limited to 10 minutes each. The first stage was the viewing of a video that introduced the tourists to the CAVE and what to expect from the environment. The second stage allowed the viewers to view a group in the CAVE while they dark adjusted. Finally, they were admitted into the CAVE. People were informed that they could expect to spend at least a total of 30 minutes to experience the entire event.
The groups were slotted into the schedule by letter (A, B, C, D, E) and by the the particular step in the process they should be involved in at a certain time. This is all very difficult to write down so I have included the actual schedule that I used as a template for all the groups throughout the exhibit. Since the first group did not have any groups to watch while adjusting to the dark, they were often allowed in to the CAVE rather than waiting the entire 10 minutes for this step and this gave us a head start on the tours.
The first slots in the chart to be marked off were the free time slots. Those had to be figured into the cycles in order to maintain the free time every hour. Next, the groups were added in. Reservations were timed so that the time on a reservation correlated with the time that a person would be viewing the video.