conference refreshments

[Ed Gould]

>I suggest that rather than reinvent the wheel -- there's an old cliche, eh? --
>the Usenix planning folks should talk to the DECUS Board and find out how all
>of this is handled at DECUS.  DECUS has been handling 4000 -- 7000 people at
>conferences for a while now.  The breaks work.  The coffee is even pretty
>good. :-) But the point is, it all seems to work well.

I have to disagree.  Having been to several DECUS incarnations, I haven't
found that the breaks really work any better than at Usenix.  From my
experience, they're worse:  I've *never* gotten to a coffee-between-
sessions break before the pastries were all gone.  I've only sometimes
made it to a "continental breakfast" before a tutorial - even when I
was teaching - before the interesting stuff was gone.

The real answer to the problem of vanishing pastries is politeness!  People
need to realize that there are a limited number of Danish available, and
that if the trays are full it's because the bulk of the attendees haven't
gotten out yet.  Use a bit of restraint:  take only one until others have had
their chance.

-- 
Ed Gould                    mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
ed at mtxinu.COM		    +1 415 644 0146

"I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady.  I'll fight them as an engineer."