Help me name 7 conference rooms

September 5, 2014 10:48 AM

I need to name 7 conference rooms. I've seen the threads with the really funny names but these have to work with stodgy overlords.

Possible themes: California related, data related although I'd like to avoid terms (e.g. petabyte, terabyte) that will get dated in a few years, something academic.

The rooms are also weirdly sized (1 for 10 people, 2 for 4 people, 4 for 2 people).

So please hope me find the balance between cool/quriky/funny and will sit on with the bureaucrats.

posted by special-k to Grab Bag (62 answers total)

Response by poster: s/and will sit on/and will sit ok
posted by special-k at 10:49 AM on September 5, 2014

Response by poster: Also statsy things, ML related etc would be cool too.
posted by special-k at 10:50 AM on September 5, 2014

I'd go for pioneers in the field. Atanasoff, Turing, Lovelace, etc.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:52 AM on September 5, 2014 [15 favorites]

There are 7 non-earth planets.

I don't understand your first comment.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:52 AM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

7 Dwarfs
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:52 AM on September 5, 2014

You could name them after mathematicians or California mountain peaks.
posted by crazycanuck at 10:53 AM on September 5, 2014 [2 favorites]

Seven Dwarves

Seven Wonders of the World

Seven Deadly Sins (prolly won't sit well eh?)

Seven Continents

Seven Seas
posted by ish__ at 10:53 AM on September 5, 2014

Palm Springs' conference center rooms are named after trees, I think. It was nice. Sequoia, Pine, Elm, Palm, Etc.
posted by Hermione Granger at 10:53 AM on September 5, 2014

Response by poster: > I don't understand your first comment.

I was just fixing a typo.
posted by special-k at 10:54 AM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

Lots of conference centers seem to use trees. I wouldn't do that. I like the idea of using famous mathematicians/data scientists.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:57 AM on September 5, 2014

Relevant XKCD
posted by Don't Fear the Reaper at 10:57 AM on September 5, 2014 [22 favorites]

Interesting landmarks in your area of town
Interesting people famous from your area of town
posted by maxg94 at 10:59 AM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

Most Significant Bit for the largest conference room decrementing to Least Significant Bit for the fourth 2 person conference room with Bit 6, Bit 5, Bit 4, Bit 3, and Bit 2 in between.
posted by Rob Rockets at 11:00 AM on September 5, 2014

We did monopoly properties!
posted by Draccy at 11:00 AM on September 5, 2014 [4 favorites]

Astronauts or space missions
California missions (the other kind of mission)
California surfing spots (Rincon, Zuma, Salt Creek, Trestles, Mavericks, Malibu, The Wedge)
posted by Lyn Never at 11:01 AM on September 5, 2014

The Latin geek in me says: Seven Hills of Rome:

Quirinal
Viminal
Capitoline
Esquiline
Palatine
Caelian
Aventine
posted by carrioncomfort at 11:03 AM on September 5, 2014 [10 favorites]

I loved when my building went from golf course names to something that makes sense - Floor number & direction/location works great. 1NW, 2SE, etc. You could even add the capacity like 1NE-10.
posted by hey you over in the corner at 11:03 AM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think something local. Our office park is built on the site of a former amusement park, so all our conference rooms are names of attractions, like Moby Dick, Space Rocket, and Monkey Island.

My former boss used to mix them up (on purpose, I think) and call the closest room Monkey Dick, but that just adds to the charm.
posted by xingcat at 11:07 AM on September 5, 2014

I work in an office where the meeting rooms are named after mathematicians. It's great and more appropriate than the nature ones I'd been accustomed to.

I wouldn't do something based on a 'seven' theme...you never know if meeting rooms get added/used for other purposes in the future.
posted by methroach at 11:08 AM on September 5, 2014 [5 favorites]

Ours are live music venue names. The other location's are vacation spots. I like the Seven Wonders of the World suggestion -- you could go with ancient wonders or modern ones.
posted by fiercecupcake at 11:08 AM on September 5, 2014

I was tasked with doing this for my office a few years ago, and we ended up naming them after 'great conferences in history'. We only had four, but our initial list was longer and then we cut back. The below are in no particular order.

Camp David
Potsdam
Yalta
Geneva
Kyoto
Paris
etc
posted by CharlieSue at 11:10 AM on September 5, 2014 [11 favorites]

Tallest mountains in California
posted by bottlebrushtree at 11:10 AM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'd shy away from data-related things, but that's because all I can think of are terms likely to be dated in a few years.

California-themed:

Names of 7 counties in California (Sonoma, Merced, Del Norte, etc). You can name the smaller rooms after smaller counties. Please, for the love of ${deity}, avoid naming any conference room Yolo if you pick this option.
Names of 7 cities in California. You can name the larger rooms after larger cities.
Last names of 7 famous California governors (Reagan, Schwarzenegger, etc)
Last names of 7 pioneers in your industry/field who hail from or have some tie to California

Not-California-themed:

Last names of 7 pioneers in your industry/field who may or may not hail from or have some tie to California
Names of the 7 continents (this gets problematic if an 8th conference room is later added). Be sure to turn the AC way down in the Antarctica room.
Names of 7 constellations
Names of famous scientists/inventors/mathematicians
Metasyntactic variables

Okay, I'm grasping at straws here.
posted by tckma at 11:16 AM on September 5, 2014

I like the idea of the name of a thing reflecting an essential quality of it, like the location name idea above.

How about naming them with recognition of their capacities?

So, the 10-person room could be Decade or Digit(al)

The four-person rooms could be Seasons, Suits, Directions, Grandparents, Paws, Beatles, etc.

The two-person rooms could be ... I'm out of ideas.

None of this is poetic, but maybe it will inspire you.
posted by amtho at 11:18 AM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

California national parks (I worked in a place that did this once).
California bridges.
California mountains.

If your bosses have a little bit of a sense of humor, you could use famous California prisons. The same place I mentioned above used the national park theme for client-visible conference rooms with nice views, while the ones without windows for internal use were named after prisons.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 11:19 AM on September 5, 2014 [3 favorites]

Redleg
Grizzly
Quail
Trout
Leatherback
Dogface
Saber-tooth

Seven of the official California animals. You can "theme" them after their namesakes as well (color scheme, pictures, etc.).

Bonus: they start with different letters and are hard to confuse with each other.
posted by Etrigan at 11:21 AM on September 5, 2014 [3 favorites]

Whatever you do, make sure they are in a logical sequential order going clockwise or counterclockwise around the building. In most cases this would be alphabetical order. I hate having to wander buildings looking for the correct room.
posted by bfranklin at 11:22 AM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I worked at a Cali office where the rooms had CA landmark names: Yosemite, Golden Gate, Mojave, etc.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:28 AM on September 5, 2014

Also came here to recommend planets, ordered in sequence moving away from the sun, and skipping Earth.
posted by Rash at 11:28 AM on September 5, 2014

I like the Seven Hills of Rome myself. Any other famous set of seven anythings that I can recall is going to get either too pop-culture (Seven Dwarfs), too polarizing (any seven politicians you care to name), too inappropriate (works of the Seven Days After Creation), too abstruse (the seven metals of classical alchemy) or too unwieldy (seven kinds of plane triangle). I think seven cities or counties in CA would be fine, if a little dull.

I was just fixing a typo.

Is there not an edit window for posts as well as comments?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:31 AM on September 5, 2014

Oh, one addition: I would steer clear of planets because you will have to hear a year of stupid jokes about "Will all four of us fit in Uranus?" before your stodgy overlords change it to something very dull.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:34 AM on September 5, 2014 [18 favorites]

If you're willing to go just the slightest bit dark:

Hayward
Calaveras
Owens Valley
Garlock
Banning
San Jacinto
San Andreas

That last one might tip it off: major fault lines in California.
posted by Etrigan at 11:36 AM on September 5, 2014 [7 favorites]

Native American tribes of California

Military bases
posted by annsunny at 11:45 AM on September 5, 2014

If this is a nonprofit, name the rooms after big donors. For any type, names with well-known theories of your field attached.
posted by tchemgrrl at 11:56 AM on September 5, 2014

Smith
Offred
Montag
Faron
Richards
Logan
Everdeen
posted by itstheclamsname at 11:57 AM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

Our office did musicians from our city - Memphis - so we have rooms named "Elvis Presley", "BB King", and so on. We are a design studio and we invite that kind of playfulness here, so YMMV.
posted by elisebeth at 12:02 PM on September 5, 2014

Re; the XKCD cartoon...How about the 7-layer OSI model?

Physical
DataLink
Network
Transport
Session
Presentation
Application

Some of those actually snap right in. "Bring the projector to the Presentation Room". Although there might be some confusion with "Network Room".
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:02 PM on September 5, 2014 [3 favorites]

Alpha
Bravo
Charlie
Delta
Echo
Foxtrot
Golf

Of course, people will start calling Conference Room Echo "The Echo Chamber." And joke about taking dancing lessons in Conference Room Foxtrot.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:02 PM on September 5, 2014 [2 favorites]

Seven different-sized California cities, matched up to the relative sizes of the rooms? Your largest room would be Los Angeles, on down to the smallest room named after, something like Santa Barbara or Buena Park.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:08 PM on September 5, 2014

Dodger Stadium
Candlestick Park
The Rose Bowl
Municipal Stadium
Polo Grounds
Cow Palace
The Forum
Kemper Arena
posted by 4ster at 12:18 PM on September 5, 2014

The Pleiades, colors of the rainbow, children's games, types of trees or flowers...

Just, please. Do not use "Native American Tribes of California" as your theme, please.
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:19 PM on September 5, 2014 [5 favorites]

One more: wine counties, such as:

Atlas Peak
Los Carneros
Mount Veeder
Napa Valley
Oakville
Rutherford
Saint Helena
Calistoga
Stags Leap District
Yountville

etc.
posted by 4ster at 12:21 PM on September 5, 2014

There's always the seven continents (mentioned previously, but I am now into this idea).

You could have meetings in Antarctica, Asia, Australia, North and South America, Europe, and Africa.
posted by amtho at 12:23 PM on September 5, 2014

Cabernet
Chablis
Chenin
Carignan
Chianti
Carmenere
Cinsault

(Claret, Chardonnay, ..)
posted by kcm at 12:47 PM on September 5, 2014

We have had lots of conference room naming discussions at my office, esp having moved offices recently. I beg you, PLEASE choose names that are memorable and understandable to all your co-workers - referring to something obscure that people can't relate to makes it hard for people to remember the names and therefore remember which name goes with which room. So, California landmarks or cities is good, fault names not so good (because they're unfamiliar names/things). Also please try to make the names relate somewhat to the position or size of the room, to help people remember. For example if you went with the tree theme mentioned upthread, Sequoia would be the biggest conference room.
posted by Joh at 12:48 PM on September 5, 2014 [3 favorites]

No funny names permitted, you say. So what I would do is come up with a series of seven names, with a completely hidden link or commonality, that only you know, rather than the obvious seven somethings. You let it slip that this linkage exists, and let everybody guess what it is. So for example: Euclid, Lusk, Picabo, Angola, Casper, Newport, Boston.

(All localities along the coast-to-coast highway US Route 20.)
posted by beagle at 12:52 PM on September 5, 2014

How about some names of trees?

r
k-d
avl
b+
splay
red-black
binary search

Or structures of holding?

Stack
Queue
List
Tree
Hash
Heap
Map

If you go with the Turing / Lovelace / etc. suggestion, make sure you name one room Curry, for obvious lunchtime meeting reasons.
posted by batter_my_heart at 1:05 PM on September 5, 2014 [4 favorites]

I worked in an office in Connecticut where the conference rooms, and some other things, were named after streets and landmarks in NYC. It was just weird.

Most meeting rooms, in my experience, are simply numbered or named based on location, eg "2 South". That makes sense to me.

Since they're small, why not name them after boxes: Hatbox, Bandbox, Pencilbox, Glovebox, Toybox, Boombox, Mailbox, etc.
posted by SemiSalt at 1:21 PM on September 5, 2014

could not resist (nsfw): 'the heavy seven', carlin
posted by j_curiouser at 1:29 PM on September 5, 2014

Whatever you do, make sure they are in a logical sequential order going clockwise or counterclockwise around the building. In most cases this would be alphabetical order. I hate having to wander buildings looking for the correct room.

Don't use alphabetic order if they are geographic place names that can be thought of in a linear order. I once worked in a place that used towns on Cape Cod for conference rooms (this is, obviously, a Massachusetts company). They put them in alphabetic order, but nobody could ever wrap their heads around that - we all knew that Provincetown had to be the last room in the row, and Bourne or Falmouth the first.
posted by mr vino at 1:29 PM on September 5, 2014 [2 favorites]

Deca, quad west, quad east, duo west/east/north/south.
posted by samthemander at 2:08 PM on September 5, 2014

Sacramento, San Joaquin, Pit, Eel, Owens, Salinas, Trinity

(longest rivers in CA)

Whatever you do, make sure they are in a logical sequential order going clockwise or counterclockwise around the building. In most cases this would be alphabetical order. I hate having to wander buildings looking for the correct room.

Or if this is relevant, try to incorporate the floor # in the name too; I had to print out a page from the employee guide at my current office because people routinely send out meeting invites without bothering to mention on which of our five floors these places are on, and it is nuts-making.
posted by psoas at 2:24 PM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Seven Summits

The Seven Lucky Gods

Or what about some codenames from famous tech/software dev projects of the past or codenames of moviespersonally among these I like:

Whistler (Windows XP)
Dulcimer (iPod)
Yonah (Intel's Core Duo Processor)
Navigator (IBM 3174)
Astro (Android 0.9)
Longhorn (Vista)
Paravel (Chronicles of Narnia pt. 1)
Paradox (Back to the Future pt. 2)
Dictel (Batman Returns)


Also NASA missions are pretty rad.
posted by Doleful Creature at 2:32 PM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ours are all named after inventors of technology that we use (Tim Berners-Lee, etc)
posted by empath at 2:34 PM on September 5, 2014

Today's xkcd is appropriate.
posted by kathrynm at 4:38 PM on September 5, 2014 [2 favorites]

Industrialists/Noted Citizens:

Stanford
Crocker
Huntington
Hopkins
Spreckles
Coit
Norton (after the Emperor Norton)
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 5:58 PM on September 5, 2014

Since it's all about stats, why not name all the rooms after famous distributions?

Poisson
Binomial
Gaussian (or Normal)
Zipf
Geometric
Weibull
Cauchy
posted by yellowcandy at 6:41 PM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet
posted by zahava at 8:35 PM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Rainbow Magic books are in series of sevens: the rainbow, days of the week, seven kinds of weather, seven pets, seven jewels, seven environmental concerns, you name it. Maybe one of the ~200 books will inspire you.
posted by Margalo Epps at 9:04 PM on September 5, 2014

Pretty sub-anagrams of California. (Then come up with a backstory for them, related to CA. You got Orcas and Acorns right? Oh and don't let's start on interior decorating.)

Acorn
Airfoil
Aria
Clarion
Coral
Icon
Ionic
Fora
Falcon
Flair
Frolic
Ocarina
Orca

(If you have an absurdist boss, some of these complete multi-word anagrams are cool. Facial Iron, Orca Finial! Prob. not.)
posted by sylvanshine at 10:43 PM on September 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

Don't use any scheme that only has seven options, because you could always add another conference room.
posted by smackfu at 4:31 AM on September 6, 2014

Not place names. Where I work buildings are named after local villages, which means that every conversation with outsiders has to be suffixed with the comment "that is, not in place X, in place Y, but the building named after X".
posted by Jabberwocky at 2:46 PM on September 6, 2014