Re: breakfast planning
Here's a thought about breakfasts:
* Food is expensive and labor-intensive, thus breakfasts are likely to
be boring, food-wise, but we should be able to provide sufficient
quantity to keep people from going hungry.
* Preparing food for a small army is hard work, which we don't have
trained people for. Forget scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes for
breakfast. Porridge might be possible. Aim at providing ingredients for
sandwiches and other things people can make for themselves.
* We arrange to have several cars we can use. One car is probably too
little for what I have in mind.
* We take the cars and several volunteers and visit a supermarket every
few days. We buy as much stuff as we can (keeping in mind perishing
times and such), fill up the cars, carry the stuff to the fridges in the
rooms. Hopefully in rooms that are unoccupied. The goal is to buy food
for several days in advance so that these expeditions don't have to
happen every day.
* Breakfast is a centralized event, not a distributed one. Anything else
is a logistical nightmare: distributing food to a hundred rooms is
something hotels can do, but we can't. Having people eat in one room
also makes cleaning up easier.
* We need a breakfast location with lots of tables and chairs. Does the
dorm have any big rooms? Can we arrange tables and chairs any way? If
necessary, we can arrange breakfast to be during a couple of hours and
people can come in and leave according to how full the place is.
* This amount of food in a distributed fridge is going to require some
bookkeeping (so we know we don't waste anything and are not running out
of anything) and therefore someone in charge of that. Ideally this same
person is also in charge of arranging the breakfast each morning:
telling volunteers what to get from each fridge and making sure
everything is in order. Think "food sarge". Doing this for two and a
half weeks is a big job; it might be good to have two or three people.
On the other hand, it shouldn't be divided up too much, or things will
get messy. If nothing else, since this person is preferably also in
charge of buying the food, and is therefore going to need money,
dividing responsibility too much is bad.
* As much as possible, we buy things that don't require cooking: bread
(sliced is not necessary, but easier), vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes,
peppers, salad, ...), fruit, cheese (unless it is too expensive),
cereal, muesli, and so on. Juice concentrates are not wonderful, but
save lots of carrying and storage space. Cheap and easy is important,
but it needs to be somewhat interesting as well. This requires planning
beforehand: someone needs to make lists of possible ingredients (keeping
allergies and diets in mind), possibly weeks beforehand, and come up
with good combinations. This then forms the basis of detailed shopping
lists for the shopping excursions.
* Every morning, a number of volunteers are going to be needed to carry
food from fridges to breakfast place, to unpack food, maybe to prepare
it (cut bread, cook eggs, whatever), and to clean up afterwards. This
should be simple enough that anyone can do it. Volunteers can be
recruited from debconf attendants (it's really easy: no volunteers, no
breakfast). If things are organized properly, the volunteers are
probably not needed until 30 minutes before breakfast starts, and are
finished 30 minutes afterwards, and probably only have to do this once,
so it's not like it's a huge commitment.
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