In Your Face, O’Reilly!
It’s not even officially spring yet, but the recent unseasonably warm weather in the Bay Area has already had me pining away for last year’s “Summer of Buzz.” As torturous as that can be when you’re stuck in an office verifying Tiger bug fixes, at least it has gotten me thinking about and planning for some of this summer’s activities, chief among them my aforementioned WWDC dinner.
As I said in my last post on the subject, this year I was really hoping to secure The Thirsty Bear as our venue. As much as I enjoyed last year’s event at Bucca di Beppo, I was a little disappointed that the rigid seating arrangements there didn’t allow people to circulate more, and I think the big open room above The Thirsty Bear would be much more conducive to socializing (it even has a pool table and dart boards!). Plus, the food and drink are light years ahead of Bucca di Beppo for not that much more money.
Fortunately, since I got a reservation early this year, I was able to beat O’Reilly and whoever else had the Bear all booked up around WWDC-time last year. Based on my previous straw poll, I made the reservation for 40, but this can be adjusted up or down as we get closer to the event and peoples’ plans become clearer.
Last year I stressed quite a bit about the payment details, but in the end everything actually worked out great, because everyone simply threw money at me the last minute (I think I ended up making money on the deal!). In light of that, and having been inspired by Merlin Mann’s informal collection for his 43 Folders MacWorld Meetup, here is what I’ve decided to do:
- Sci-Fi Hi-Fi will put up the money to secure a private bartender for the evening (tax writeoff don’t you know—gotta wine and dine all those industry bigwigs!).
- I have set up a DropCash campaign to collect money for the food. The minimum food purchase The Thirsty Bear requires for an event like this is $18/person ($21.60 with tip), which, with tip, puts out target around $868. This will essentially buy us lots and lots of excellent tapas (a variety of Spanish small plates for the uninitiated) which people can munch on casually as they mill about discussing Tiger or RSS or what have you.
I like this informal arrangement because it allows people who have a little more money to spend to possibly subsidize some of the people who have less (i.e. students). Anyone who donates to the “student fund” by contributing more than $21.60 will receive recognition for that somehow (I’ll have to figure out exactly how later).
That’s about all for now, other than to note that the event’s official web page is now live. More later…