Buffet style?
Not sure if we've done it that way at the restaurant before, ... certainly not as long as I've been going to BALUG meetings (since sometime in 2003).
I'd be inclined to keep the restaurant updated on our best (gu)estimates of probable attendance, and let them figure out if they want to do buffet style or just our usual "family style" to the table (but upstairs as we generally did in the past).
With 18+ RSVPs, I'd say we'll almost certainly be >40 folks, ... 100 or more? A big hard to guess ... we can certainly hope for that.
Quoting Andrew Fife afife@untangle.com:
Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that we've already gotten 18 RSVPs for the BALUG meeting in January. I expect a few more RSVPs to trickle in over the next couple of days from the mailings that I did on 12/24. As a marketing guy, I'm a bit embarrassed that I picked such a bad day to blast the mailings, but life got in the way of it happening any earlier.
Additional promotions include...
1)Forums (already posted to gentoo, ubuntu & linuxquestions.org... more on the way)
2)ESR blog mention? ...a long shot, but there is no harm in asking
3)2nd Email blast in January (planning to be a bit smarter about timing and targeting Tuesday, January 8th)
4)Flyers to be put up at SF city college (by Andrey) and Stanford (by me)
None of the RSVPs are from BALUG regulars, so I'm optimistic that we are going to draw a big enough crowd (40+) for the Four Seas Restaurant to let us eat buffet style upstairs. Personally, I think 50 is a realistic number and I'm hoping for closer to 100.
I'll contact the Four Seas over the next couple of days and request that they let us sit upstairs and eat buffet style.