There Must Be Food
Message from 2022
This post is pretty old! Opinions and technical information in it are almost certainly oudated. Commands and configurations will probably not work. Consider the age of the content before putting any of it into practice.
I kind of made a declaration on the ACM officer’s mailserv about competition meetings for next year:
There must be couches or some absurdly comfortable seating.
Shared computer, possibly a projector. Notebooks isolate everybody, but if everybody’s working off the same code and talking about it, there’ll be more learning.
Food/drinks. Even if it’s just snacks, it’s something to munch on while working, which will add some positive reinforcement.
This year we didn’t really get as much interest as I would have liked, and I’d like to think it was because all our practices were in kind of bland locations with an incredibly stodgy atmosphere. While it may be harder to meet my UNREASONABLE DEMANDS than to stay with the momentum, it’ll be for the better in the long run. More people will hang around and have fun, and if they’re not careful, they might learn something before it’s done.