[Conferences] cheap food

[Catherine Devlin]

We just finished PyOhio 2009.  I'm a biased observer, but I think it
was awesome.  Eventually, I intend to write up an extensive report,
but I'll start with the food (generally the biggest expense of a
conference).

One of the things I was proud of was feeding roughly 200 attendees on
$5/day each (lunch, drinks, and plentiful snacks).  Even at that, I
think we over-bought by about 50%.

The key is not to be locked to a designated caterer, which most venues
try to do.  CHECK THE CATERING POLICY BEFORE CHOOSING A VENUE!  Such
caterers typically milk their monopolies shamelessly, charging $20+
for even the simplest meal, plus a pint of blood, a kick in the shins,
and a curse upon your immortal soul.

Lunch on Day 1 was bagels, plus a flood of snacks and fruit from the
grocery store - all extremely cheap.  Leftovers kept people snacking
happily throughout the weekend.  Day 2 was pizza, the cheapest mass
meal you can get delivered.  We asked locals for pizza recommendations
and got a good one.  I think the unlimited snacks was one reason
people didn't feel like we were skimping on food.  It's amazing what a
cookie does to a person's mood.

The next cheapest meal option I found was sandwiches from Subway, but
they would have cost roughly $4 per person, which wouldn't have left
enough for plentiful soda.  You must caffeinate.

Speaking of caffeine, if you can get Keurig machines, for coffee, do.
They are cup-at-a-time brewers, and you buy individual units of coffee
to use in them.  We got them for $0.50 per serving, and the vendor
loaned us the machines for free.  That's vastly cheaper than getting a
caterer to bring urns in.  Coffee drinkers like them, too, b/c the
individual units come in a variety of flavors.

I recorded our expenses on this wiki page (largely so I can repeat the
order for next year).

http://wiki.python.org/moin/PyOhio/Food

-- 
- Catherine
http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com/
*** PyOhio * July 25-26, 2009 * pyohio.org ***