Tuesday night, after the first full day of paper presentations and the
poster reception, Microsoft held what we had intended to be a low-key
event at the Restaurante Yemanja
a lovely local Bahian restaurant on the beach (not that we could tell…
the sun sets about 6 PM in Salvador, so all we could see was a lot of
black!). We just wanted to do something where the ~20 or so people from
Microsoft could talk with people that we’ve collaborated and perhaps
make some new acquaintances. We didn’t want to compete with any other
SIGIR event, so we just invited people we knew or met via word of mouth
and some paper invites that we handed out during the conference. I had
planned on (and reserved space at the restaurant) for about 60 people…
I had estimated we’d invite about 80 people, half would want to come, so
20 Microsoft + 40 conference folks = 60. It seemed very logical at the
time. I was still concerned about the event… would the restautant be
all set up for us? Would the busses be on time? Would they hold enough?
Would people come? It turns out I really shouldn’t have worried at all
about people not coming… that was far, far from the problem.
We had two busses that held 25 people each, and left about 8:00 PM. I
was a bit nervous when we filled two and there were a number of MS
people and non-MS people still milling, waiting for the next bus (they
would return). Once at the restautant, we had approximately 30 minutes
of relative calm before things got a bit past us. I received a call from
one of my colleagues at the hotel who was shepherding people onto the
bus. I was getting nervous when he said the third bus was full, but we
could squeeze in 75 into the space we had. Then he mentioned the fourth
bus was filling up.
100? That’s not good… not nearly enough space.
The restaurant was very accommodating, and put people in the main
seating area in addition to the back room that we had (people were still
together, just in two groups now).
Then the fifth bus rolled up, with a shuttle van from the hotel not far
behind. Oh boy.
Luckily, some people from the first busses had started to finish, and
the restautant was getting more space from customers (it was about 9:45
PM by this time). So we got yet anoter big table, seated everyone, and
we were good to go. I and Jorge, a local TAM (Technical Account
Manager… what MS calls field sales, from what I understand) who
happened to be in town were able to start to sit down and actually have
some dinner… and WOW! was it worth it. We had this shrimp dish, which
was shrimp and chicken in coconut milk, I believe, along with another
shrimp dish in creme. We had some muquecas (MOO-ke-kas), which are fried
balls of various things (shrimp, chicken, and fish were the ones I
tried), and a bunch of other things that I’m not remembering at the
moment. For desert, we had this amazing coconut ice cream — there was
also a passionfruit ice cream as well that I tried that was also delicious.
Well, when all was said and done, we shipped people home in a couple
waves, and finally the last 14 of us hopped onto the hotel van about
1:30 AM for the trip back. Wow, what an evening! This was fantastic, and
for all the logicistal issues with the overflow, people seemed to have a
great time, and we did in fact meet a lot of new people at the event.
Turns out we met about 100 new people at the event — the final tally,
according to the bus drivers (who charged us per person, so I assume
they were being as accurate as possible) was 136, with one guy (Jorge)
who arrived there directly. So, 137… wow. That’s half the conference!
So I guess it wasn’t such a low-key event after all. 
Great thanks to the people from Microsoft who really did a great job
inviting people and then making everyone feel at home and comfortable in
the chaos. Big kudos to our pal Chi Chao from Yahoo who helped get the
busses going — while his name implies he’s Chinese, he’s actually
Brazilian and speaks fluent Portuguese. he was able to talk with the
drivers and make sure they knew what was happening, which was a great
help. So who says Microsoft and Yahoo can’t work together? Also props
to Paulo, a dev in test in Redmond who knew Salvador and set up the
restaurant reservations and got everything prepared for us. And huge
props to Jorge for stopping by and really smoothing things out — from
helping to order food and helping work with the restaurant staff to put
people everywhere. I think we turned an otherwise slightly-above-average
day (e.g. a special 60 person event) into a great day for the restaurant
— 137 people total!