Re: [Debconf-team] Food [Re: Registration questions]

I'm just reading this to pick up for DC16... It may be helpful to think, what do you REALLY want to know, and could you ask that?

How about a tick box, "would you mind/agree to eat vegetarian meals (no meat/fish - you choose the words here) for the official/provided conference meals?"

If not, what would you require (e.g. 2 meat meals a week...)?

Perhaps do this as a survey to past attendees? Might be messy, but will give a representative feedback, no? Perhaps we just need to move away from the archaic categorisation altogether.

So instead of forcing people into boxes, perhaps frame the tick boxes and supportive open fields to what it is you really want to know?

hope this helps, still new to this :)

Bernelle Verster (indiebio)

Cape Town, South Africa (DC16)

On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 12:52 PM, martin f krafft <madduck@debconf.org> wrote:

also sprach Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au> [2015-02-23 03:25 +0100]:
> given there's a "meat+fish" option, I'd probably read "Food
> preferences: None" as "Don't give me any food, I'll go elsewhere";
> or maybe "I'll eat anything" and expect it to be the same as the
> same as the meat+fish option. If it really means "lacto-ovo
> vegetarian" probably better to be a bit more
> explicit.

Noted. So instead of "none", maybe "default (lacto-ovo vegetarian)"?
But I think we should probably also add a sentence or two into the
form to explain that this year is slightly different than the past.

> (If the baseline is appropriately nutritious vegetarian meals, it
> might be reasonable to just tell people that -- ie, not have
> a meat+fish option at all -- and suggest that they go to
> a restaurant or foodtruck etc if they want a steak or a burger?
> Assuming there are such things somewhere nearby, anyway.

For DC15, this is unfortunately not reasonable as outside places
aren't that close and we'd rather avoid the venue clearing out for
meal times. Also, I don't think the venue is quite ready for that
yet. They are far ahead of German standards, but not quite ready yet
to go completely vegetarian. Not sure we'd want that either, since
part of DebConf is sampling local culture and food, and German food
is traditionally quite meat-y.

> Isn't it usual to have a free-form text field for this? Makes it
> a bit easier, and a bit less risk of requirements getting lost in
> email shuffle. ("Additional dietary restrictions:" perhaps, after
> choosing meat/veg/vegan as a baseline)

I think this is a good idea. Thanks.

> Based on someone's experience at LCA this year, might be worth putting in a
> "don't add jokes in this field, thanks!" to save people from themselves:
>
> http://lists.lca2015.linux.org.au/pipermail/chat/2015-January/000620.html

Hehe. Never happened to me, and I've been writing "needs craft beer
with every meal intake" into my LCA form every single time I went ;)

--
.''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@debconf.org> @martinkrafft
: :' : DebConf orga team
`. `'`
`- DebConf15: Heidelberg, Germany: http://debconf15.debconf.org
DebConf16: Cape Town: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16

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