ScienceOnline2010 - Saturday Night Banquet at the Radisson

Note: If you've read all of this at the conference website and just want to pay,
CLICK HERE.

For those of you attending ScienceOnline2010, I'm the one tending to the Saturday night banquet at the headquarters hotel, The Radisson at Research Triangle Park.

The banquet will be held following the Saturday 16 January sessions beginning at 7 pm.

The dinner was a great success last year with about 135 of the registrants attending and was a great way to unwind and continue some of the discussions we began.

This year, the supper will be followed by the Ignite session. For those who don't know, Ignite was started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis and consists of five-minute talks with 20 slides where each slide advances automatically every 15 seconds. Here's the proposed program below. I've seen Wayne Sutton's talk below and it is a fantastic and dynamic format:

"Why Triangle is Better than Silicon Valley" - Wayne Sutton
"My "Little Black Book" of Scientists I Love" - Joanne Manaster
"Crowdsourced Chemistry - Why Online Chemistry Data Needs Your Help" - Antony Williams
"Blogging on the tenure track" - Janet Stemwedel
"Being mentored - not only for grad students" - Pawel Szczesny
"Dive Into Your Imagination" - Annie Crawley
"SARS, Drugs, and Biosensors" - Aaron Rowe
"The Story of NanoBioTechnology" - Mary Spiro
"Data mining the literature with Zotero" - Trevor Owens
"Games in Open Science Education" - Antony Williams and Jean-Claude Bradley

Banquet Menu

But first: the food. The banquet will be served buffet-style, allowing multiple trips such that even Bora should be able to put on a few pounds:

* Garden Greens with assortment of dressings
* Marinated Vegetables
* Pasta Salad
* Fruit Salad
* New Potato Salad

* Roast New York Strip, sliced and topped with Mushroom Marsala
* Boneless Breast of Chicken with White Wine Sauce
* Cashew Salmon with Orange Basil Beurre Blanc

* Penne Pasta with Marinara Sauce
* Oven-Roasted Rosemary Potatoes
* Fresh Seasonal Vegetables
* Rolls and Butter

Desserts Station
* Assorted Cakes, Fruit Pie, and Pastries
* Coffee, Tea, Milk

The negotiated base price is $28/person but the hotel adds a 22% service charge and 6.75% NC state sales tax.

Therefore, the total cost is $36/person including tips and taxes. Advance PayPal or credit card payments carry an additional $1.50 fee.

Beer and mixed drinks will be available at your cost in the adjacent hotel bar.

The best wine we can offer at $20/bottle
We've again negotiated with the hotel to serve a better quality wine than their $20/bottle mass-produced proletariat swill.

We hate drinking swill, especially with our friends who have traveled great distances to be with us.

The hotel permits us to bring in some fine wine that is selected by David in collaboration with local, estate-grown wine merchants, Wine Authorities. Of course, the hotel charges us a $10/bottle corkage fee but the Wine Authorities gives us one red and one white for $10/bottle at cost. Last year's selections even garnered compliments from our European colleagues. So, we get you the best we can for $20.

(I tried to argue with the hotel that we are UN-corking the wine and they should therefore be paying us $10 each. You know how that turned out.)

This year, we are setting up PayPal for advance payment of dinner and/or dinner and wine to keep me from having a myocardial infarction when I have to give a cashier's check 5 days prior to the banquet. Using PayPal will also allow you to pay in advance with either a credit card or your own PayPal account and generate a receipt for those of you who can file for institutional reimbursement. My apologies in advance that PayPal charges an additional fee of about $1.50.

We'll still take cash at the door for bottles of wine but we'd ask you to prepay wherever possible for your banquet ticket.

(I just learned that some international colleagues don't have good functionality on PayPal so it's fine to just pay when you get to the conference; however, please do sign up for dinner at the conference website so we can give the hotel the best estimate of attendees.)

Who are you paying for?

Myself $37.50 Myself and 1 guest $75.00 Myself and 2 guests $112.50 Myself and 3 guests $150.00

Guest names, if any

Once your payment clears, I will mark you as paid on the list at the conference website.

If you are unable to use this method of advance payment, we can take cash at the conference. However, please still sign up at the bottom of the conference banquet page so we can get a fairly accurate count for the hotel.

If you have questions, please comment below or send me a note to abelpharmboy via Teh Googly One.

We're really looking forward to seeing you!