Everyone, the new and improved event activities are up online with scheduling that is up for re-shuffling*. Thanks to everyone who contributes a space, a talk, a food recipe, a song and what not. By the looks of it, we are in time to fit in the last ideas and make it even better.
Let me quickly take you through what we have so far. On Thursday afternoon on Feb 25th we’ll set camp at the main venue, SMartBe, start with a welcome word and introduction to LOTE, drinks, light dinner. We’re being offered a sample of FuckUp Nights events that Antiheroes are running for some time now in Brussels and make the acquaintance of the creative and entrepreneurial local scene. Next up is a concert by Kira’s favourite Nele Needs a Holiday singing candidly about losers and losing in career, life and love.
Friday and Saturday are the fullest days – with most sessions going on in parallel in rather intimate setups (up to 20-30 people each). We will designate rooms in advance, depending on size and facilities. You will notice each session belongs to a “track” or a general theme – Development, Finance, Social/Health Care, or Culture and creative industries. This is to help us have some frames of reference and make sense of failure in our different professional and personal lives. All sessions are highly interactive, even the talks or presentations will see enough time for engaging with each other. “Speakers” are community members like me and you, or invited friends of the Edgeryders organisation. They are in touch, but not all are signed up here yet.
If you are hosting a session and your name is not on the speakers’ page yet, email noemi@edgeryders.eu with your photo and bio.
Some, like Manzini, Palmer, @John Coate are prominent in their fields, and may even have solutions to unFailing. Others are very keen on throwing problems at the crowd to figure out something they obsess about. Some are taking part in an Edgeryders event for the first time, and coming all the way from the US and Canada. And yet all are up for making LOTE5 a level playing field, running imaginative exercises and making the most out of the diversity in the room.
Sunday is for freestyling and going deeper into projects that we didn’t have time to during previous days. Many sessions proposed last minute will probably end up for Sunday.
Consistent with our Living on the Edge tradition, the kitchen will be a major attraction. For lunches we will have small cooking teams; our community chefs are already taking on the hard task of planning dishes for over 100 people!
Evenings are for moving out of the main venue in other Brussels neighborhoods and touring the cosmopolitan city – Irene is arranging home cooked dinners with Syrian influences and music (Friday), and another evening where we get to be a part of one of the anti food waste initiatives in town, Disco Soup. A great way to mingle and hear stories of Brussels that one rarely reads about in the media.
Another one of SMartBE’s artistic venues, LaVallée, an artists co-work space where we’ll be spending Friday evening.
I would suggest we agree to think and care about the following as we prepare for the event:
- Remember that “speakers” are not speakers in the traditional conferencing style. They are conversation openers for a given topic, offering a question that they, or the rest of us are all trying to solve somehow. Everyone should have a chance to contribute on the topic during that session.
- Don’t worry if your English is not good, participants come from many different countries, and someone will be able to help with interpretation if you need it.
- Think about how we harvest the knowledge and document our learnings. One thing we’re good at as a community living predominantly online is sharing knowledge with those not in attendance. Make suggestions in a new post in the [LOTE5 workspace](/c/workspaces/lote5). Ping @Kaja.
- If you want to propose a new session or if you agreed to do a session but didn’t have a chance yet, now’s the time. Go to the program and follow the link to upload your session.
- Pick sessions you like and leave a thoughtful comment to the facilitator to let her know you will be attending.
- Tweet sessions you like using \#lote5.
*To the extent it was possible, we tried to keep individual preferences for days and hours, but you may notice small differences from your uploaded sessions. To re-schedule your session, drop me a line below or email noemi@edgeryders.eu
