[Chicago] My visit to the conference hotel

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I visited the conference hotel today at noon to sample the lunch fare and
talk things over with Marcia Perzyna.  I also met Michael, the head chef
(didn't catch his last name).  Unfortunately, nobody else was with me to
provide alternative opinions.

In no particular order, my comments:

    * They will be serving boxed lunches via a buffet line.  The samples
      today included steak fajita wraps, chicken wraps, italian subs and
      roast beef sandwiches.  I tried the steak fajita, chicken wrap and the
      sub.  I think they will be fine for lunch.

    * There was no vegetarian sandwich option displayed in the menu or in
      the samples I was shown.  I told them that between 10% and 20% of the
      registrants specified vegetarian or vegan food.  I told them that they
      could either substitute one of the meat sandwiches with some sort of
      vegetarian option (say, a roasted veggie wrap) or just reduce all the
      other sandwich options by 10-20% and add a vegetarian option.  Given
      that they currenty have four meat options I think they could serve two
      or three of them at each lunch with a veggie option.  That would allow
      them to rotate the meat choices and thus vary the lunch menu a bit
      day-by-day.

    * I sent an email to Marcia with the breakdown of the food choices
      people made and will try to keep her updated as we get closer to the
      conference.  She has my email and phone number if she has any
      questions.  I understand she also met with Carl Karsten and Tim (last
      name?) Thursday evening.

    * Seating will be kind of all over the place.  Marcia identified three
      places in particular: Atrium - 100-120 people, Metro - 250,
      Rickenbacker - 120 max.  If conference rooms are empty we can also
      move there with our food.  It's only a few steps from where they will
      be serving.  In my past experience I never liked everyone-in-one-huge-
      room seating anyway.  It's very loud and you're sitting at tables with
      a dozen people, so you can't hear anyone except your immediate
      neighbors.

    * I couldn't get into their parking lot because someone was working on
      the entry gate, so I just parked in the 15-minute loading zone while I
      was there.  Marcia said they have 600 spaces in the hotel parking lot.
      She also said they notified the Village of Rosemont about the
      conference in case there is any overflow.  She said the Village's
      parking garage is right next to the hotel and is $11/day.  That might
      well be an option for us locals who drive.  She confirmed that it's
      about a five-minute walk from the Rosemont Blue Line stop.  We can
      probably cajole them into having their shuttle buses swing by there on
      their way to O'Hare.  We may need that option given the sort of winter
      we've had so far in Chicago!

    * One evening (tutorial day?) they will be serving pizza.  They get it
      from Pizzeria Uno, though I gather it's baked on-site (probably just
      shipped frozen to the hotel).  The samples they had today were veggie,
      cheese, pepperoni and sausage.  Basic thin-medium crust pizza.  It was
      decent, not spectacular.  Not deep dish for you massive-quantity-of-
      cheese-types.  I suggested that they serve roughly equal quantities of
      all four types.

    * Marcia indicated that they originally bid on the conference expecting
      about 600 people.  According to the t-shirt page we have around 900
      total registrations at this point, so while they appear to have the
      capacity to handle our conference, things will be a bit different than
      either they or we expected.  I guess that's the price of popularity.

    * Vegan options are still a bit up-in-the air.  It's fairly uncommon to
      get pastries made without eggs, for example.  We'll have to press them
      a little to satisfy that option I think.

Overall I think we will be fine.  The food isn't four-star, but it's not
rubber chicken either.

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