Re: [guadec-list] GUADEC baby friendliness level

[Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>]

The Grace Hopper Women in Computing conference does an awesome job of child care. But even with several thousand people attending their conference, I don't think I saw more than 15 kids in the day care place at any given time. That said, GNOME is a very different community and I see a lot more significant others and families there than I do at any other conference except perhaps OSCON.

Some thoughts on daycare based on Grace Hopper's: (I used the Grace Hopper day care one year for my son who was 4 years old at the time.)

1. It's free to attendees and paid for by a sponsor, i.e. it's one of the sponsorship package options and the sponsor gets recognition for it and gives enough to cover the costs.

2. It's outsourced. The conference provided a room which included bathroom and kitchen facilities and a company that specialized in child care of this sort flew with all their stuff, hired staff and took care of it.

3. Hours. The hours were awesome. You could drop your kid(s) off anytime between 7am and 11pm - any time there was any conference activity going on. I was able to use this to attend one of the evening parties. (I do not think anyone left their kid there all that time. You could drop them off for a few hours in the morning, pick them up for the afternoon and then drop them back off at night. It was completely flexible.)

4. Fun. My son *loved* it. They had games, activities, food, movies, blankets and pillows for nap and night time. Other kids. Several years later he still talks about it occasionally. 

5. Camaraderie. I met a few women I probably never would have met because we saw each other every day at the day care center and chatted. Still work with one of them.

6. Professional. The staff was very professional, very on top of day care policies and rules and very caring. My son had a problem one day and they some how tracked me down to my conference room.

My thoughts on whether we should offer day care or not ... it's great if people are planning on bringing their families. However, most people that travel have some sort of  existing arrangement for their kids when they travel. So I don't think there will ever be tons of people taking advantage of it every time.

Stormy

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 7:17 AM, meg ford <megford gnome org> wrote:

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 7:10 AM, Karen Sandler <karen gnome org> wrote:

On Wed, April 3, 2013 3:56 am, Alexandre Franke wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:58 AM, meg ford <megford gnome org> wrote:
>> The Art Institute of Chicago has a nice private space that contains a
>> chair
>> for breastfeeding/pumping  and a changing table. It's in an area that's
>> accessible to both parents, so either parent can do feeding and
>> changing. It
>> would be nice if we had a space like that set aside at conferences.
>
> I feel silly for asking this but I honestly have no clue: when you say
> a chair for breastfeeding/pumping, do you mean a special chair that
> has been designed for that purpose, or do you just mean that there was
> a regular chair (in an area) dedicated to these tasks?

It's not silly to ask, until recently I didn't know anything about this. I
don't know what they had at the Art Institute of Chicago but we're just
talking about a regular chair in a clean and private place, preferably a
comfortable chair if possible.

Yeah, it's not silly to ask, and I do just mean a regular, comfortable chair. The space just came to mind as a public place with nice simple accommodations for parents.

Meg

karen

>
> --
> Alexandre Franke
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