Apparently some of you had a terrible dinner experience in Brussels in April at the Identity Open Space. Well so did I.

It was one of the low points of identity community organizing involving logistics in a foreign city. I had an offer from a local in the (identity) community to help out with anything that I needed help with for the Identity Open Space. I asked him to help find a venue for our dinner. I trusted him to do this and it was not really a good choice. It was far away (although walking distance), the room was crowded, it was hot, we had a set menu, the food was not good and it was expensive. So I am sorry to all of you who endured it.

Lessons learned:
1) Don't fully trust the local (get secondary confirmation from an additional person)
2) Tap more knowledgeable local sources - like hotel concierge to find venues for dinner.
3) Ask the co-coordinating organization for help too (that would have been Liberty Alliance in this case).

Sorry again to all of you who had a bad dinner experience. It was not my intention. I really wanted to be able to eat and talk together and discuss identity as a community. I know that my table had a good conversation so I hope that others did too.