Retrospective of Winter CPQM January 2015 in Santa Rosa [unfinished draft]
from Jim Avera. 

--- FACTOIDS ---

The church rental was $800 + $500 refundable security deposit.
Rented 100 chairs & 6 rectangular tables to augment the church's equipment.
  Vendor: Rental Place, 6001 Sonoma Hwy SR.  They delivered @4:30 Friday
  and picked up around 5pm Saturday AFTER being called to remind.
Lunch was soup & sandwiches from Olivers Market.
Coffee: Used RFFM's hot-water urn, 1 coffee maker owned by church, 
 and we thought we were borrowing another, but end up buying one instead.
3 lbs each of regular & decaf coffee.   Plenty was left over.
Brought our own trash barrel & trash bags.  The church had one barrel,
  so we could designate one for compostables (paper only, no utensils)
  which went into SR green waste.

--- WHAT WORKED ---

Created clear, written job descriptions, with each job of moderate size
  (most jobs involved less than 2 hours work.  15+ jobs altogether).
Asked for volunteers starting about a month before.

Made hosting CPQM be a high priority for RFFM
  Committees were asked to avoid activities which might drain energy away 
  from CPQM.  Periodically reported at M4B.  Emphasized that we were hosts 
  and had an opportunity to be of service to the wider Quaker community.
  Also emphasized that we were responsible for physical arrangements,
  but not any program content.

  Unlike in previous years, there was no visible anxiety within RFFM
  about hosting Quarterly Meeting.

  Many people volunteered.  The work was made easy.

Gave a deposit check to the church to unambiguously secure the reservation.

Rented chairs & tables and had them delivered.

We had a dedicated overnight housing coordinator.

--- WHAT WE WOULD IMPROVE IF DOING IT AGAIN ---

1/2 bagel per person is enough for Breakfast & snacks.

Order only 100 sandwiches ahead (halves still wrapped separately), and
call to increase if needed.  
Ask them to NOT put each wrapped half in a plastic bag.

Spend less overall.

TABLE RENTAL: Rent 10 rectangular tables (we rented only 6).  
  Fortunately Jim had 4 tables he brought from home.

COUNT TABLES WITH THE PASTOR to have agreement on how many were there.

COFFEE: Buy custom-ground coffee, ground for percolators.  The pre-ground
coffee was too fine for the metal percolator seives.  Or get filter disks.

FH GUEST ROOMS: Don't know if we used them?

TRASH: Compost & landfill were only partly seggregated, we had to manually
sort through the bagged trash later.  Plan for that, or have volunteers
take trash by hand and put it in appropriate containers (like they do at
some bike Century events).


(END)