[Debconf-team] non-JJ food meeting summary

[Jimmy Kaplowitz <jimmy@debconf.org>]

Hi,

Yesterday Simon, Jeremy, and I met to discuss food options for those times when
we aren't going to use the Columbia cafeteria, which is looking to mean
weekends and the daytrip day, plus the conference dinner. Here's the plan:

Weekends and daytrip
====================

People will take this as an opportunity to try the local restaurants and
socialize in smaller groups.

  - Those who are paying their own food costs on a per-meal basis will pay as usual.
  - Those who are not paying per meal (sponsored-food, Professional, Corporate) will have prepaid VISA signature-only debit cards restricted to use only at restaurants and grocery stores. https://www.wrl.com/ (WRL) is the vendor.
    ** ACTION: ** No later than Tuesday, I or Michael Schultheiss will have contacted WRL and, unless they are slow to respond, gotten exact price details.
    - Current understanding of the pricing:
      -  The only per-card fee is less money than we would have spent on catering or cafeteria-staff overhead, so will not increase our budget for equivalent food.
      - The only startup fee is likely to be covered from SPI general (non-Deb*) funds since it is useful to future SPI activities.

Related daytrip issue: I reached out to the Brooklyn permit office of the NYC
parks department to check if we need a permit to bring 200+ people to Coney
Island for most of a day. Their director was very helpful, agreed that he will
let us know on Tuesday so that we don't pay for a permit we don't need, and is
willing to give us lots of info such as which parts of the beach are more/less
busy or closest to the baseball stadium. Nice to know they're friendly.

    ** ACTION: ** I will send an email to the director of that office before bedtime
Saturday night, so that he responds on Tuesday.

Conference dinner
=================

The current plan is to have an outdoor (but rain-protected) catered meal somewhere within walking distance of the venue (to avoid more subway fees), including some amplified sound for things like the DPL speech.

Unfortunately the NYC parks department generally does not give permission to erect tents or to use more than one or two tables for events in Manhattan parks, so that's not feasible. If we find a way around this, Simon showed me Morningside Park which could be a nice place, or we could do Central Park, etc.

Richard provided links about how to hold outdoor events on the Columbia campus.
Pricing would need to be investigated, but if people wouldn't mind doing it
on-campus, it looks like an otherwise feasible option.

    ** ACTION: ** Jeremy will follow up with caterers to get quotes for this
    ** ACTION: ** By close-of-business at the end of next week, Jimmy or Simon follows up with Columbia's event management people or website to see if pricing is feasible.

    ** QUESTION: ** What other options can you all think of?

Other food-related thoughts
===========================

If we decide to do coffee breaks, we can go to a nearby place like Absolute
Bagels and get great fresh bagels+coffee, either delivered by us or by them.
This probably shouldn't be in the hacklabs to avoid pissing off CS/SEAS, but
might be doable in the CEPSR lobby since IIRC lots of conferences have food
there.

This is definitely not worth doing if our budget ends up unable to afford it.
Unless, that is, people want to do it with personal funds; I might be
interested in chipping in toward that if enough others do.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy@debconf.org