From BarCampWiki

We're always looking for folks who can assist with the variety of tasks that make BarCamp Boston run smoothly! We have tasks suited to all sorts of skill sets and time constraints. Got five minutes? Help us publicize the event. Know some companies who want to support geek events? Talk to Jon Pierce.

Please add your name to what you are doing below. Feel free to add tasks, even if you aren't doing them. We need to make sure we're covered this year and in future years. If it's something that can be done ahead of time, like buying snacks, label it as 'done' when it is finished. Thanks in advance for volunteering and thank those who do!

Bringing a printer (& what kind of printer):

Printing banners and table signs:

Getting drinks:

Office supplies:

Snack run:

Meals:

Recording of what we did for future use.

Breakfast (Vaughn):

• Baked goods: Mariposa Bakery (617) 876-6500; mariposabakery@gmail.com) provided these for a discount. Future breakfast wranglers, please discuss this with Suzanne Mermelstein, the owner. They need to know about 5 days in advance, though we only gave them 3 days this year. Mariposa has capacity to go up maybe to providing pastries for 350-400 people max, per day. Above that, the order will probably have to be split. Just tell Suzanne how many people you want to order for, how many pieces of pastry you want each person to get, and how you want the order distributed between pretzel rolls (least expensive and very awesome), muffins (medium expensive) and scones (most expensive).
  • Sat (for 220pp expected): 90 muffins, 110 scones, 40 pretzel rolls. This was a good number.
  • Sun (for 110pp expected): 50 muffins, 50 scones, 25 pretzel rolls. This ran out fast but was probably a good number too. 20+ more rolls/muffins would have been ok.
  • Timing: I sent in a preliminary order (approx qties) to Mariposa 4 days before, gave final qties for both days 2 days before. Option to change Sunday order by 3pm on Saturday (we didn't this year).
  • Total cost: $600. Orig price around $770, I think.
  • Next year, would probably go for 60% muffins, 25% pretzel rolls, 15% scones and allocate 1 piece per person. This should reduce the total cost by about 15%.
• Caffeine: Starbucks (Broadway at Ames; (617) 577-7511) provided the coffee for a really hefty discount. Scott and I bought teabags. Coffee formula = 1c per person. Because of the Starbucks deal, we just got enough coffee for 300 on both days.
  • Both days: 10 gallons of caff, 2 gallons of decaf, 5 gallons of hot water for tea, all in insulated containers ("cambros"). They provided cups, sugar, cream, napkins, stirrers. Coffee amount was spot on for day 1, but on day 2 we could have had 1 gallon less of both decaf and caff.
  • They provided insulated containers but usually require quite a bit of lead time to find them. Future breakfast wranglers should give them about 5-7 days notice (though, again, this year they had about 3 days notice and it was fine).
  • Equipment: Special pricing contingent on having the cambros (makes it really easy for the Starbucks staff to brew the order (goes right into the container). If they had given it to us in 16-serving boxes, we would have had to pay full price. The branch manager managed to get us 3 cambros from a branch in Needham but couldn't confirm those until Friday afternoon. I borrowed insulated containers (2 x 5 gallon) from Toscanini's in case the Starbx ones didn't come through.
  • Timing: Order only confirmed the day before.
  • Total cost: $96 total (with tax) for both days ($0.16/person). Effective discount on the coffee was about 83%. Orig price for the coffee would have been $600ish [$1/person]; cheapest catered coffee service I could find was $1.95/person; Dunkin' Donuts Box-o-Joe works out to be $1.39/person.
  • Next year: Try to find more 2-gallon and 1-gallon insulated containers. For the tea, try to find 2-gallon insulated containers that have only been used for hot water (nearly impossible, but why not shoot for the stars?) Perhaps consider buying Barcamp cambros (2x5, 2x2)? Considering it was marathon weekend, we were really lucky that Starbucks could find some for us and that Tosci was able to loan theirs.

Lunch: We ordered lunch from Beauty's and vegan pizza from Peace o Pie. I used this formula to calculate our order -- registrations * .9 / 3.5 (90% yeild of registrations, 3.5 people per pie). This was too many pizzas on Saturday -- we ordered ~120 xl pizzas from beauty's, cut into 12 slices, 2 catering salads, and 9 vegan pizzas. We had at least 20 pizzas left over. Our yield was more like 50% of registrations this year (Mike Walsh will elaborate I hope. I think 100 pizzas would have been better -- though all the leftover pizza was still gone by 4pm. It is also completely valid to decide better to have extra pizza than too little, and just plan on ordering a little extra.

On Sunday, I ordered 45 pizzas, one catering salad and 4 vegan pizzas based on this formula -- I decided that we had really only needed ~90 pizzas the previous day, and guessed at a 50% attendee decrease from Saturday to Sunday, based on past experience. This year we had a record breaking number of attendees on Sunday, and exceeded this estimate. We ran out of pizza within 20 minutes of lunch opening. The line had been gone at that point, and most people were able to get seconds, but those who stayed in their sessions late and were late to lunch did not get any pizza. I ordered more 7 more pizzas around 1:30, and this seemed to be right -- people dove on them immediately, but did not finish them for 30 minutes to an hour.

I emailed Beauty's about the pizzas a week in advance, finalized the Saturday order on Wednesday, then bumped it up a little on Friday, based on registrations. I made Sunday's order based on Saturday's order Saturday afternoon at 2:30pm (with prior warning to Beauty's)

The specific order I put in for Beauty's on Saturday was as follows. I later increased it, but the items in the order remained the same in proportion:

1 large catering garden salad (vegan) 1 large spinach pine nut catering salad

• vegetarian pizzas (38 pizzas):
  • pizza americana (plain) x15
  • spicy sweethart x 5
  • andyamo x 5
  • pizza americana peppers and onions x 8
  • greek beauty x 5

• meat pizzas (70 pizzas):
  • pizza americana (pepperoni) x 10
  • puttenesca, with pepperoni + garlic, extra sauce x 5
  • pizza americana (pepperoni and bacon) x 5
  • meat lovers x 15
  • hawaiian x 5
  • bbq chicken x 10
  • buffalo chicken x10
  • bella carbonara x5
  • bacon cheeseburger x5

Beauty's has great specialty pizzas, but there is a danger of ordering too many specialty pizzas and too few 'vanilla' pizzas. The ratios in this order seemed to work out well, and no single pizza type looked particularly unpopular. I also would generally make sure not to put cheese and pepperoni pizza at the start of the line -- whatever is at the start of the line goes quickly, and it is good to make sure that these basic pizzas do not run out first. I also arrange the pizza line such that people can read the session board while waiting in line for food.

Camera:

Taking pictures:

Making and displaying the schedule: Jay Neely & Van Nguyen & Andrew

General Assignments

Our fearless leader: Shimon

Misc. - Jeff Potter, Mike Walsh

Publicity - Jkbaumga

  Geeky School promotion - Mike Walsh
  Text for Flyer(s) and general promo - Jay Neely

Registration desk - Sooz with assist from Mike Walsh

Sponsor contact - Jon Pierce

  T-Shirts and Stickers - Mike Walsh
 

Venue coordination - Steve Pomeroy

Web site and wiki wrangling: Jeff Dlouhy & Jay Neely

Graphics - Joseph Flaherty

Coding Contest - Dave Fisher

FounderMatch Program - Mike Walsh

Food Co-ordinator - Josh Ain