Re: [guadec-list] Guadec Planning Meeting Notes - 20th January 2007

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

On Wed, 2007-01-31 at 09:58 +0000, Rob Bradford wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-01-31 at 14:46 +1300, Glynn Foster wrote:
> 
> > >      *  Do we include lunch with registration if possible?
> > >      *  Venue has set caterers, and is not flexible on this. We need to
> > >         know what they provide and if it is suitable.
> > >      *  Another possibility would be to ask a nearby hotel if they could
> > >         do any catering at a reasonable cost
> > >      *  Packed lunch style catering may be another option if we run out
> > >         of other options.
> > >      *  Lunch might only be provided during core days to keep costs down,
> > >         and to allow more flexibility. There are plenty of eating places
> > >         nearby ranging from cheap fast-food to supermarkets to more
> > >         expensive eateries.
> > >      *  Lunch will be an hour and a half which should allow plenty of
> > >         time for impromptu meetings and discussions.
> > 
> > In previous years we've had trouble with catering, mostly because everyone likes
> > to eat different foods (or have different religious backgrounds). Having options
> > close to or at the conference venue is awesome, but might not be the best bet to
> > include it as part of registration or as an official contract that we'd enter in
> > IMO.
> 
> 
> Whenever I have had lunch provided by conferences it's always been a bit
> rubbish. The choices are usually small and not to everyones taste. The
> wide range of eateries in the surrounding area should be sufficient and
> should mean that everyone gets fed to their liking. This also gives
> people the choice of either grabbing a quick lunch and hacking away or
> instead taking a relaxed sit-down lunch.
> 
this is ok for us europeans, americans and people from other rich
countries, but my experience is that people from Latin America and India
(the ones I've been hanging with while at GUADEC's) have no money to go
with the "rich" hackers for lunch to the places those "rich" hackers go,
so they end up going on their own, which makes it hard for most of them
to get to talk to other hackers, since lunch and dinners are when you
have more chance to meet other people. And that happened in Spain last
year, which is much much more cheaper than the UK, so in the UK it's
gonna be impossible for them to even go to 1 lunch/dinner (as some
Chilean people did in Vilanova last year)

So, even if we have it optional, I would suggest we try to get all
hackers together at least at lunch time, and offering free lunch is the
best option :-)

In Copenhagen the catering was really good (except for the 1st day,
where it was all vegetarian :-) so I'm sure you can find someone to do
some acceptable catering. Maybe we can expend a bit more money and have
a good catering and then have "rich" hackers pay for the lunch as part
of the registration.
-- 
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>