I had a chance to visit the White House for a Roundtable on Accelerating Responsible Sharing of Federal Data. The meeting was held under “Chatham House Rules”, so I won’t mention the other participants here.
The meeting was held in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. We entered through the visitor’s side entrance. After a security gate (where you put your phone in a lockbox, so no pictures inside) with a TV blaring Fox News, there is a pleasant lobby for waiting, and then an entrance right into the Roosevelt Room. (We didn’t get to see the entrance in the opposite corner of the room, which is just a hallway across from the Oval Office.)
After the meeting, as a sign of the national state at the time, participants were given a gift — a box of red, white, and blue M & M’s with a barely legible signature on them. I wasn’t brave enough to eat the contents myself, but according to my kids, they were okay, but not as good as Smarties or Reese’s Pieces.