What Makes a Good Conference? Part VI: Got Food?
Satisfied bellies allow for networking and note-taking.
GSM:TABRITMIA
[Note: I will be citing the state, the theme of the conferences, and the month/year, but not the name of the conferences or the names of the host(s) or organization(s).]
The last thing you want are people so hungry, they either faint for not eating, or have to run to the bathroom for 30-45 minutes because the snacks they had were not appropriately filling and went through their system too quickly. Embarrassingly, I do take a long time to use the restroom, so I use the lunch hour to go back to my hotel room’s bathroom or other restroom for that break, so this does hurt my ability to go to a restaurant for an hour to eat with other people. I’d prefer closer to two hours for a lunch break, but this is neither here or there as it is a personal issue. However, some conferences and training sessions weren’t perfect in their meal plans. Having snacks or catering at the venue would have boosted networking opportunities for me.
The Georgia medical training was intense, and by the end of it, I was becoming fatigued and mentally exhausted because I had nothing but water and tea. One could argue that I should have had snacks for the four-hour session; however, I had planned to go out to eat at a nearby restaurant around 7:30 PM EDT, but the training ran unexpectedly late (as I described in Part IV: The Schedule). It would have been nice to have been provided a few snacks like nuts or jerky with some cookies during the breaks in the room to minimize fatigue. Personally, I took the fatigue as a sample of the coming times and as something to watch out for at the medical training at Tennessee and at the economic conference at Texas.
The training at Tennessee was not as intense as far as physical training was concerned, but they did not have snacks there, either; so I packed some candy bars that had MCT oil and various drink powders that either had collagen, spirulina, or chaga to help me power through it; but I was still very fatigued and didn’t recover well until I drank some sample red raspberry leaf tea, which was part of that day’s session. I had brought some light items to have at lunch during the training, but they weren’t enough. Yes, I could have bought some snacks at the hotel during that time, but they were mostly salt and sugar. Fortunately, I never had to run to the restroom at Tennessee until lunch or after the day of training was over. Sadly, because of the structure of the course, it was difficult to interact with people during breaks and at the end of the day’s session since people were grouped up, plus I had to use the restroom badly by then.
Texas was a disaster on the main conference day. I had to be more circumspect on what I was spending, so I had to rely on supplements and teas with a few organic candies as well as snacks I bought on my drive there. I did have some precooked sausages as well, but I wish I didn’t buy the chocolate bark from the organic foods shop. Since the conference room didn’t have snacks, I brought the chocolate bark as my snack of choice to have during the day, and I was finished with it by around 1 PM CST. Unfortunately, even though I went to the restroom at lunch and had a light meal with some of the sausages, the bark and whatever other light snacks I had a few days prior went through my stomach so quickly that I missed the last ten minutes of the next-to-last presentation as well as all but the last ten minutes of the debate that happened next on the schedule – a total of about 45 minutes in the hotel restroom! Furthermore, I noticed during lunch that another independent group had catering for their event at the hotel. It would have been nice to have had a catered lunch, so I could have socialized with people at the time and possibly avoided the need to use the restroom in the middle of a presentation! I felt the debate would have been great to share with the private Discord group if I had been able to hear it.
Read the rest (nine parts total):
Part I: Backstory.
Part II: Planning and Announcements.
Part III: Venues.
Part IV: The Schedule.
Part V: Presentations.
Part VII: Entertainment.
Part VIII: Aftermath.
Part IX: Summary.