Hitchgathering/2011/Magdeburg Meeting/Minutes/Day2

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Introduction

After some productive practical work we went to the park to discuss the points brought up beforehand by Valentina and Tomi and everything else that sprung from that.

The "why", "what" and "how" of The Hitchgathering concept in general

Why?

  • meet up with hitchhikers; promote hitchhiking
  • for the later involve beginners, by offering help more directly
    • -> getting started:
      • we have links to hitchwiki already
      • promote pre-gathering to hook up with experienced hitchhikers
      • offer help / contacts for newcomers
      • just click a checkbox "I wanna help" on your profile and you show up in a list so people know they can contact you for help

How?

  • organise communication:
    • again: local contacts per region (e.g. Germany+Austria+Switzerland): a small group of people for Hitchhiking Clubs, CS communication, local communities and press
    • TODO: edit the wiki: on main orga page, list people responsible
    • TODO: Tadas for Lithuania, Martin for Latvia
  • most people will pass through Bucharest: have a bigger promo action there, like in BCN?
    • we might not need to promote but then we can connect to the local community

What?

  • encourage people to offer activities; have a workshop list on the website
  • also allow to suggest workshops on the website and people can pick it up
  • connect a forum for workshops coordination, e.g. "can s/o organise a beamer for showing a movie?"
  • ask on website registration what people like to see and can offer

Ideas

  • "open mic"
  • jam: who can bring a guitar etc. on the website
  • sporty stuff: who brings what on the website
  • free shop
  • Open Space
  • games: a on-site place to suggest them
    • (threesome) speed-dating, if you are caught telling bullshit you loose, otherwise you win points
    • have a bowl with name and an one-line description to tell a best moment story
  • Lightfoot box
  • photo story telling (see evaluation)
  • FIXME: see evaluation, also camera valentina

Website

  • TODO: Ben: reorganize menu
  • reorganize the main page: have a more stranger-friendly place, put the stories aside
  • add a short page on Hitchgathering history
  • TODO: how hard it is for Ukrainians and Russians to come? ... put it on the website in Russian

Differences to other gatherings, including ours

  • Umh, which gatherings?

Learning points from Hitchgathering 2010 feedback

Promotion

  • Promotion was a pain and boring. Who wants to do that?
  • Concentrate on social media, internet
  • TODO: Julien: reach out to authors etc (see evaluation suggestion), contact Miicoo, hospex camp organizers, Andrej, La Sophiste, Pavel, Tom (Roadjunky), the guy that organizes the Paris-Dakar HH race.
  • TODO: have flyers
  • TODO: track distribution and make it more open; make better use of them
  • TODO: much more DIY promotion, e.g. Michendorf, Grunewald in Berlin, the A'dam spot to Germany, Horner Kreisel in Hamburg

Location

  • have a kitchen like last year: TODO: sign up for stuff on the website, but mostly local support (soup kitchens?)
  • have a bike, as town will bei 40m away
  • have pre-meetings with relaxed travel times/distances to the main meeting, to not exhaust people
  • make sure there is some (Russian-speaking / local) core facilitators to turn to; everything else should work ad-hoc
  • look for nomad bases in the east, there is one: TODO: get in touch with Christopher
  • we need power!: have solar panels / add links to buy etc.
  • Internet: try and organise mobile Internet, it should be cheap in Eastern Europe
  • have a contact list on the laptop for those who didn't sign up before, maybe even on the website directly
  • make people upload photos (to Flickr?), have an "official" tag, maybe one common Flickr account
  • provide auto-sticking paper for name tags; or whatever information they like: Malerkrepp (english?), Henna
  • have a hashtag for twitter, people should put their best moment on the internet and we compile it


Hitchgathering 2011: location, preparations, facilitation, community involvement (word-of-mouth), marketing & media

Allocation of roles and clarification of responsibilities for organizers and facilitators

  • there is the idea of regional contact persons, see above
  • we do not see a need for much roles and instead favor a task-centered approach:
    • put names and dates maybe on todo items
    • move completed items to a "done"-headline
  • TODO: have two people looking over the todo list regularly and query people about it

Do wee want it big? If so, how do we make it BIG (500-1000 participants) enough to stand out from other gatherings?

  • Whoever comes are the right people.
  • We reject competition in favor of diversity

facilitating the people who want to participate/collaborate but donno how (TODO lists, skill sharing)

  • this is on the todo list for Ben already

Deciding and start developing the communication and platform channels (Drupal or/and OpenAtrium? Hitchwiki community...)

  • Now that we organized within the existing communication channels we will postpone that to next year

What's next

  • orga and real pre-meeting beginning July in Berlin?
    • distribute remaining flyers