[Balug-announce] BALUG meeting 2005-09-20 7:00 P.M. PDT. at Four Seas Restaurant

[Michael T. Halligan]

Rick,

I have not called any of these places. perhaps the banquet room is a 
good feature, in my
opinion it's the only feature. I'll admit I have no concept of the 
difficulties related to finding
a group friendly venue. On the other hand, perhaps it would be more 
effective to find a
company with a large meeting room to donate a few hours of its' time, 
and then the meetings
could be restaurant neutral.


I have, however, been to the Four Seas outside of balug, and not been 
impressed. Every few months the same
conversation rears it's head on Balug.. Why is it so quiet? The answers 
are always the same, lack of
speakers,  the need to avoid drama, and the restaurant. I have no ideas 
as to how to solve the
first two issues, but the restaurant one seems solvable.

There are enough companies in San Francisco who I bet would love the 
"publicity" of donating a large conference room
for a few hours per month to a Linux crowd... Perhaps a change of venue 
could revive some interest, raise some
membership dues, and open up opportunities to hire caterers?  I'd 
personally find a LUG which had a different
caterer each month to be something worth attending, and worth paying to 
attend.





>The Four Seas (note name) was and is handy because BALUG founder Art
>Tyde is friends with the restaurant's owner, which is leverage
>sufficient to get the upstairs banquet room on a recurring, regular
>basis (with sufficient advance notice given).
>
>Having the banquet room to itself means that BALUG can have speakers, and
>acoustic isolation from the rest of the seating so we can have some hope
>of discussion among BALUG's tables.
>
>And it might not have occurred to you to do so, but you can go
>downstairs at the Four Seas and order their really _good_ food, i.e.,
>avoid the standard tourist fare you otherwise get in the banquet room.
>
>  
>
>>If it has to be Chinese, how about the Jasmine Teahouse in the Mission? 
>>    
>>
>
>I assume you've verified that a large banquet room can be regularly
>reserved just for us there, without extra expense?  Ditto for the others?
>
>If you've done none of that but are just throwing out names of good
>restaurants, the whole lot of the rest of us can do that, too.  (I grew
>up in Hong Kong, Michael; it's basically my native cuisine -- and I
>lived in S.F. for a long time.  I can recommend quite a few good
>places.)   But it would rather miss the point.
>
>And, if you haven't even _tried_ getting the Four Seas Restaurant's 
>non-tourist food by walking downstairs and ordering, kindly do that, then
>  
>