The Council of Europe is looking for citizen experts to contribute to a conference about the transition of youth to an independent active life. That’s you: this is our life, and we all are experts in it. We need session leaders, presenters, discussants, visualizers, bloggers, social media ninjas, journalists, interviewers; everything that makes a great conference.
There’s two ways you can come. The first is simple: book a ticket to Strasbourg and a hotel, and we’ll badge you in to participate in the conference. It’s that simple. First come, first served!
But we also have some funded travel places. The exact number we can wedge in depends on how expensive people’s airfares are, but it’s about 100. We’re going to pick them from the network using a gaming-resistant social network analysis package to identify the core of the network and bring them together from all over Europe, face to face with each-other and Big Government. This is, frankly, bonkers. If you thought EdgeRyders was futuristic, this is a whole other level of futuristic stuff right here.
How does it work? Pretty simple
- You join the EdgeRyders site.
- You indicate on your profile that you are eligible to come to the conference - there are a couple of preconditions like you need to be in Europe, and you need to be able to travel to Strasbourg on our given dates. To do this, go here, click on "Edit my Edgeryders profile" (the middle button just under your name) and select the radio button "Yes, I want to come to the Living on the Edge conference!" (it's just under your name).
- You post at least three mission reports, (we recommend "Share my Ryde") - browse campaigns and pick!
- You surf around the site, read some mission reports and profiles, comment them, and click the [I WANT TO MEET THIS PERSON] button a lot.
- Be sure to post interesting material to the EdgeRyders site, so people know why they should ask to meet you in Strasbourg. Let people know they can get involved.
- Then we crunch the data using the social network analysis software, and try and get as many of the people who want to meet each-other to Strasbourg for the conference. Note this is not a popularity contest: it's about pairing up people who want to meet, not "click a lot of buttons!!!" Gaming-proof, remember?
- You'll get an all-expenses-paid travel-and-accommodation package from the Council of Europe to come and meet all these great people you wanted to meet. Don't ask how we fixed this, we're pretty amazed this is happening too!
- be sure to do this immediately. This is a huge organizational effort, and we need some lead time to get it together.
Right after the conference is the weekend of the 16th and 17th of June, where we’ll be helping you to organize the EdgeRyders Unconference. Saturday and Sunday, as many people who want to will stay on in Strasbourg. You have to make your own arrangements, unfortunately, we’ve only got funding for accommodations for the official conference. But we’ll gladly get you travel booked to give you time for the unconference too!
More about the Council of Europe hosting this conference and details about the unconference setup in this post!