Ritual Working Seat Reservation System
We could build software who's functionality is very similar to selecting your seats on a flight.
At the beginning of each week, the schedule resets. You go to the Ritual Working website and select an available table that you want to work on. Next you specify the day that you want for how long based on that seat's availability (since you might want more than one day, we have you select the seat first so that you can see availability -- whereas flights are non-repeating).
Last minute appointments are fine, but each reservation you make draws from your resource/point pool. Walk-ins are also allowed, but reservations obviously take priority.
The system could work so that a full day costs 50 points, and each hour (presuming an 8 hour day) would cost 7 points. Walk-ins maybe cost 3 points, but you're not guarenteed a space.
Spaces could be priced according to Scott McMullan's desire to spend $50/mo for one day a week: $50/4 = $12.50/day. So points would cost $0.25/ea. At $1.75/hr, that's pretty reasonable. Maybe Scott needs to be willing to spend a little more? ;)
Alternatives
Often I see programmers unknowingly re-inventing an inferior wheel. Is this ASRS an inferior re-implementation of oBIX ?
On the other hand, other programmers try to make one monster all-singing, all-dancing program that tries to do everything, but ends up not doing any one thing particularly well based on research paper. Would taking oBIX and adding all these cool features to it create such a monster?
Is this ASRS something that can or should be loosely connected to oBIX as a side system ?
Real Demand
"We've never had too many people since we've been open. In some ways, this is why the reservation system proved to be unnecessary once we got underway. I was sure that having a reservation system would be necessary to "assure" people that they wouldn't be wasting their time if they showed up... turned out that we typically have 2-3 people most of the time, maybe up to 5, but rarely more than that."
Chris Messina
