Nashville: Dinner Ambassador Program

I'm glad to help work on this.

It could be super handy to have a printed short list of restaurants that are able to accommodate larger groups on the fly so whoever shows up can just pick one of those and they’re off to the races. We can call restaurants around the area and I bet the staff will be able to give a sense of how many they can accommodate on the fly.

Notes from a discussion we had on this at the December 14 DDI meeting:

• Having options for different restaurants and different dietary needs are important. Having that organized ahead of time would be good.
• Hard to know how many people might be interested. But if it’s a LOT, it’s possible we might even want to have the possibility of going to a couple different places each night for people who want to eat different things. Once you get beyond 8-10 people give or take a bit, it can be hard for a restaurant to accommodate that large a group. And can be hard to get people to agree on a place.
• If we had some sort of sign-up, then in theory we might be able to set up reservations ahead of time. Particularly for places close by the conference area, it’s highly likely they will fill up fast.
• Flexibility allowing people to join in on the fly is also good.
• Another way to look at it might be that the point is to give people something to do, not do it for them. So maybe we make a reservation for 8-10 and if we go over then at least folks have met each other and we can suggest another place? That seems also kind of harsh. Sometimes you don’t know you need dinner plans until it’s dinner time, so a signup sheet could be problematic.
• Hopefully not an issue, but might be worth thinking about ahead of time, what do we do if a creeper tries to join a group? Ask them to leave is simple enough. Just want to make sure we plan for what to do if somebody acts inappropriately.
• Having at least one reservation in place might be good. Could maybe get an idea ahead of time through Slack to see how many people would be interested in going to these dinner. Could give us an idea if one reservation is enough or maybe two.
• Sometimes it's easier to make a choice if it's pre-determined and expected. "We'll be going to this BBQ place, here are the options, caveats, etc". Then you can decide to come, or just enjoy the walk. Sometimes just walking to and from places at a con is some of the best stuff. Good way to get photos.
• This could be more of a “matchmaker” service - just a way for small (or larger) groups to self-organize, rather than making reservations, etc. Something along the lines of “Don’t want to eat alone? Again? Don’t want to eat with the same group of people? Again? Stop by the DD&I booth to meet new folks to have dinner with!” With that framing it’s less like “if you’re not one of the first 8, you’re left behind”
• It would be nice if the matchmaking could have pre-determined food options.
• Challenges to matchmaking on the fly: A) it taking 30 minutes or more to decide on a place, B) Finally getting there, and there’s no room, or like an hour wait. So there may be some value in having one or two things set up with reservations, and if people want to do something else, or if we have too many people, then those folks can still do something on the fly. And reservations can often be flexed up by a bit if there’s one or two more people.
• It could also be super handy to have a printed short list of restaurants that are able to accommodate larger groups on the fly so whoever shows up can just pick one of those and they’re off to the races.

Takeaways from the discussion:

1. Regardless of what to do, we should research dining options near the conference/hotel area.
2. May be worthwhile to do a survey beforehand to get an idea of interest level in attendance and any dietary needs we might want to accommodate.
3. Find a way to balance spontaneity with paralysis of choice and avoiding long wait times at restaurants.

I'd be happy to put together a Google map of options that are inclusive of folks with allergies/dietary restrictions, if it would be helpful.

@hrodrig: That would be awesome if you'd like to help with that. I'm wondering if maybe it would be good to start with a spreadsheet or a document, so that it's easier to use the info in multiple ways.

Here's a Yelp search centered on the Music City Center where the conference is happening. https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=&find_loc=Music+City+Center%2C+Nas...

And another search for near the conference hotel, the Renaissance Nashville Hotel: https://www.yelp.com/search?find_loc=Renaissance+Nashville+Hotel,+Nashvi...

This group dinner toolkit for planning from AdaCamp https://adacamp.org/adacamp-toolkit/group-dinners/ could be useful.

@dead_arm Thank you so much for sharing that! It looks like exactly what we are looking for and can serve as a good framework for how we handle this.

The next step is probably setting up a spreadsheet where we can track potential restaurants, with different columns for the various criteria suggested on here. We'd probably add columns for vegan and food allergies, as that's important for a lot of people.

We have an overall D&I planning spreadsheet where we can probably put a tab for this. Then once the spreadsheet is filled out, we can add just the names of the restaurants to start, and then folks can pitch in by looking up data for a few restaurants at a time, rather than one person looking up data for 40 restaurants, which could be a lot to handle.

After looking over the adacamp packet (and copying stuff over), I have some ideas on how to move this issue forward:

Goal: to give attendees a way to eat in the safe(er) company of other conference attendees.

1. Collect a list of restaurants

Essential. All restaurants should:
- accept reservations
- seat a group of 10-12 people
- accept reservation cancellations with 48 hours or less notice
- have reasonably low noise levels
- be in areas where it is safe to travel alone at night
Nice to Haves:
- are cheap to middle-range price for the area
- are close to the event venue
- are close to most people’s accommodation
- are wheel accessible
- have vegetarian and vegan meal options
- have meal options for other known dietary restrictions from the registration information

2. Select four from the list of restaurants - by popular vote or discussion in a weekly meeting. One restaurant for each day Mon-Thurs.
3. Collect your ambassadors (1-2 per restaurant)

- decide who runs which dinner
- have them input information about their dinner on the volunteer spreadsheet (contact @sugaroverflow if there are issues)

4. Collect attendees

- create a google form for sign ups.

5. Find sponsors (or if we already have dinner packages sponsored at this point yay)
6. Closer to the conference dates - like the last week of March - set timings to meet up and send out calendar invites to the attendees.

These are my suggestions to help get this rolling - I will leave implementation and next step decisions to @mdrummond :)

Here's the spreadsheet where we're collecting ideas for locations: http://bit.ly/ddi-nash-dinner-options

Let's make a goal to get this filled out by Thursday, March 15, and announce how we'll select options at that time.

Thank you everyone for the input and votes! I've finalized the Dinner Ambassadors program and picked three restaurants.
Now we're looking for ambassadors and attendees:

Please volunteer as a ambassador or sign up for a dinner: DD&I Nashville Volunteering sheet on the "Dinner Program" tab :)

And post here if you have feedback on the choices or the information about the restaurant.

Some feedback from our meeting:

- Do we need to get more word out about this?
- Have people sign up in advance? Leave a few spots for day-of sign-ups?
- Goal is to have dinners set up at accessible, dietary-friendly restaurants for folks who don’t have dinners to go to
- May be better to have one night to promote for this rather than multiple nights
- Make sure we are organizing this for others and not just for DDI team
- Sessions go until 6, which makes it hard to do a dinner before other events start
- Thursday is the biggest window between sessions finishing and evening events, but closing session finishes on the early end, so it’s a bit early for dinner
- Maybe Wednesday night?
- Maybe have lunch ambassadors for people to meet up for lunch?
- Would need two shifts, one for 12 and one for 1
- Lots of feedback that at lunch it was hard to tell which food was really vegan

I'm adding credit and closing this issue as fixed. Thanks so much everyone!