Hospitality suites?

[Henry Spencer]

In article <71673 at pyramid.pyramid.com> wendyt at pyrps5.pyramid.com (Wendy Thrash) writes:
>Someone from personnel asked me what people like to find in hospitality
>suites.  I told her large quantities of edible food and imported beer,
>but it started me wondering: What _do_ hackers want?

Edible food, yes.  A good supply of *non*-alcoholic drinks, over and above
the beer.  (At at least one Usenix reception, the hotel staff seemed to
have considerable difficulty keeping the soft-drink table stocked -- my
guess is that many public-relations/convention-planning people assume
that everyone drinks [alcohol] like a fish, like them. :-))  Real Coca-Cola,
not brand X [or brand P!] tank-car cola.  For that matter, it would be
very nice to see milk and juices in addition to sugared bubble-water.
Doughnuts (in quantity!).  Apples and other fresh fruit.

>... Yoyos?  Fluorescent shoelaces?  Little pocket screwdrivers?

See if you can come up with something new and useful.  The shoelaces and
yoyos were cute, but something utilitarian gets remembered for years.
Especially since you can repeat it with much the same effect, where toys
and shoelaces are mostly novelty value and get stale quickly.  Durable
penlights?  Credit-card-sized calculators that can do hex and octal?
A little parts kit to convert a Sun Ethernet transceiver cable from
clip-on to screw-on?  (No ':-)' on that one -- if you only have a limited
supply, you might need to call in the riot squad to restore order!)  A
little RS232 jumper box?  A pocket-sized reference card for something of
wide interest (RS232; Ethernet cabling; ways of breaking Unix security :-))?
A six-inch ruler marked in tenths, twelfths, picas, points, and 300ths
of an inch?

>... wouldn't it make
>more sense to have people there who know something about all the exciting
>work the company is doing (if, in fact, it's doing any) than vacuous
>types handing out information packets and pizza slices?

If you have vacuous types handing out information and pizza slices, you
can expect to be treated as a source of wastepaper and pizza.  Have big
garbage cans outside for the information packets. :-)  On the other hand,
if you actually have people there who know what's going on, a reasonable
number of people will stick around to hear what they have to say.  This
goes double if you have some of the troops, not just the generals, so
prospective employees can ask what the company is *really* like and have
some hope of a straight answer.
-- 
Van Allen, adj: pertaining to  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
deadly hazards to spaceflight. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu