Georgia’s Futurespotters 4th Bi-Weekly meet-up took place last Thursday at cafe Bauhaus. Now I could paint this picture all roses & sunshine, but I have to add that I was quite disappointed with the turn out. When we held the workshop over a month ago, there was mutual agreement that these meetings were something the participants, you, desperately needed. I have been facilitating this, because I agree it would be very beneficial for all. However, as the weeks go past, the turn out has been less and less. So, just a minor side note, I am not organizing this for me, or for Edgeryders, or for UNDP, I am setting these meetings up for you all, so you can benefit from it. If you don’t show, you can’t benefit from it. And the less people show up, the less beneficial it is for those who do: these meetings are there for you to share your project and ask for help where needed.
Now, the good thing is that people have been showing up, and maybe not to all meetings, but there has been a consistency which I am grateful for. At this past meeting we discussed the following issues: Venue for the International Event, Social Activities, Hosting a session and Horizon2020.
Venue
Khatuna and I have found two venues! One is CCA, the center for contemporary art, a non-profit organization which aims to educate people and give artists a place to exhibit their art. They have a special program for underprivileged students to get an MA there for free and other projects. The chairperson, Wato, said he would also love to host a session on this linkage between education and art. The place itself is gorgeous, think Brooklyn Loft meets minimalism, meets georgian old architecture. The other venue is ISET, the economic department of Tbilisi State University. It is very central, has a beautiful garden, and has several different smaller rooms besides a conference room. Today Khatuna and I will decide and we’ll let you know.
Social Activities
There has been a lot of discussion what kind of social activities we could organize. The ideas we had previously: picnic, something volunteerish, like cleaning the park, a mapping activity, etc. Now, Bauhaus had offered us to cook at their cafe, they would provide us with a place to cook and we could bring the ingredients ourselves, we could all go to the Bazar and buy veggies and other ingredients. However, unfortunately Bauhaus has been having major problems with their neighbors and they’ll be moving to a new venue in July. They are now discussing whether or not they can host us end of June… I will keep you updated about this.
Luckily, Nika from Vake Park offered to host several social after workshop activities at Vake Park. He will discus what interesting activities we can do, but ideas so far are: having games, make art/music, clean the park, have a picnic there. The great thing is that if we spend the afternoon/evening at Vake Park we have a solid after workshop program. Preferrably this would take place on the second day, the 25th.
Jeff, from Open Street Maps Georgia is interested in hosting a small mapping party, however, is not sure yet whether he’ll be in the country around those dates. He will keep us updated.
Hosting a Session
Nika from Vake Park offered to host a session on community building. But he was a bit afraid of doing it, as he has never done it before. I told him I could co-host it with him, he will upload the event description soon! I am excited about his story and all other’s regarding activating people for a cause, how to do it and what challenges everybody faces in their countries.
Horizon2020
Unfortunately Eric from Jumpstart is out of the country, but promised me he would take a look at the current proposal. Nika from was very excited to hear about this as well and would also give his constructive criticism soon. A very lucky coincidence is that Ninutsa happened to have contacts of the EC’s person responsible for Horizon2020 in Georgia. It will be very easy to set up a meeting, but I would really need some more input into the document from others before I can go ahead and meet. Also, I would like Eric or someone else from Jumpstart to be there with me. Mamaduka had also his two cents regarding the proposal. To him it seemed nonsense to ask money for setting up a program to teach a free software. According to him it goes against the ideology of open software to be paid to teach people.
(ps: I can’t seem to ping anyone, I have seen a post on it on the dev group, but it still hasnt been resolved?)
