Are you guys considering to make a ticket available for people that don’t have the time to contribute ?
I’m sure there will be many people happy to pay to attend the conference (could be fixed price or donations). Obliging people to contribute with their time could be a big barrier for attendance… I know my agenda is completely full and I’m overbooked, so I don’t have much time to contribute to activities that are outside my goals.
Mixing the two, you get the best of both worlds.
I plan to propose a workshop on: how can we dare to fail more ? It would be cool if I could invite some people to attend, even if they don’t have time to contribute to LOTE5.
Tell you what. How about documentation duties during event?
Hi Daniel,
nice to read you again (I think we met at fuckup nights no?).I think we could issue tickets at the door in exchange for one of two things:
As individuals: That people sign up for one of the tasks required during the event but not before e.g. taking notes from sessions, helping to cook etc.
As organisations: That they sponsor it with a contribution prior to arrival in order to help us cover some of the expenses involved and produce a rigourus, high quality report etc. Here’s the pitch for orgs (deck of 8 slides with more info in the presenter notes): http://bit.ly/1RMeiPP
If people do have 2 minutes/day & want to arrive at event informed enough to make the most it they can sign up to the count on me list to recieve 1-2 headlines for reading + sharing with their networks:http://bit.ly/1RlEfHl
heya, good to meet you Daniel, welcome to Edgeryders.
Feel free to invite people along, they will for sure have things to help with onsite. The good thing about diversity is that while some have a set of skills or time to offer now, others may have more later, or can compensate with other things. Completely agree with you. Just today in the weekly community call we were talking about having a long ingredients list available at check in in Brussels so that people can offer to bring them or donate small amounts to support meal cooking.
@ Nadia. Maybe ! I think prices for sponsors are way to high. I know many people that would like to probably come not for the whole conference (workdays), but that would not be able to contribute at all. Especially high level people that are overbooked and have a family. What they could bring is insights and knowledge. I think that in any community there are people that contribute a lot, and others are more passive. I’m actually quite fine with that. We can’t expect everybody to contribute in the same way with time and energy, or pay a huge amount of money by being a sponsor A good option could be open tickets for a small amount of money that breaches this gap.
Hm, not sure about that. It would be helpful indeed, but I wonder if it doesn’t create an imbalance having people “earning” their ticket by buying it versus people who do work, also fairness issues. We’ve been talking about this and found it’s hard to estimate the value of people’s work - once you put a price on it, it risks underestimating it. Of course people participate differently, and that’s acceptable, but you have to deal with equivalence once numbers come in.
I propose contributing with a small amount for food rather than 'the ticket" itself - and that is something everyone can do according to their own budgets.
On the note of “entrance tickets” and paying for LOTE5 in general …
Maybe it would be possible to find a way for people to contribute to other participants’ travel costs? I’d love having a great diversity of people present, and maybe that can be enoucarged by mutual help?
At my last Art of Hosting training in Sweden, one of the participants came from Gambia, who had to take out a loan for the trip. After the other participants heard that, of course people wanted to help out with the expenses. It would be a pity if people stayed home because they can’t afford the trip on the one side, while other people would be willing to contribute financially.
Just another idea how to use the money, if people want to get rid of it.
@Kaja, this is a killer idea! Edgeryders has been doing this since the first LOTE, and will be doing it also for LOTE5, despite shoestring budgets. However, in my experience, it only works if somebody leads by example. The way humans are wired, we imitate the behavior we like: monkey see, monkey do. The leader, I think, should be you.
So here’s my proposal.
Decide that you want to put up a "micro-travel grant" to support people traveling to LOTE5 in the interest of participation diversity. Set up an amount, or decide it in terms of free accommodation (for example, you rent a B&B room in Brussels for someone else to use. I will help, matching your own amount up to 100 EUR.
Announce it. This is very important. If people do not see the exemplary behaviour, they will not imitate it. Write a short post, saying exactly what you say in the comment above. Add a nice picture with smiling people.
Allocate it. You decide who you want to support, and how. You could ask people to write you a comment, or an email if you want to keep it more reserved, as a sort of informal application. Or maybe you already have in mind a person you want to support, in this case you just announce that you propose this idea of micr-grants, you set one up, I stepped in to add a little money, and then you allocated it to X.
We even have a precedent: Edgeryders offered free accommodation for 10 people at 32C3, and @msanti stepped in to offer two more on his own money.
@Daniel.Kerrigan@Kaja you two started something. Around the same time this week I heard from folks not sure if they can make it because of finances. Like @Alberto says, some people would be more private and won’t reach out saying they can’t afford it.
So the thing to do is one of you to start collecting offers and if you are in Brussels, Daniel, maybe help with the booking. Alberto pledged an amount too. I am also pledging to support someone’s stay for 2 nights in a hostel - that would be around 50-60eur?
Yes, I know! And I planned to catch up all those lose ends on the weekend. This awkward bug called “work” dared to sneak up on me and keeps me from the aspired level of involvement at the moment.
Two things: This was an idea to match people who don’t have time to donate, but would like to support the event and asked whether they could pay for it. I feel like I have more time than money to contribute, so I’m maybe not the best match … Daniel?
Do you think there could be way to also be private about support, if people prefer? Not everyone wants to be known for that, either, as well as some people might want to stay private about their needs for support Maybe that’s where I’m stuck. Don’t want to be the one who officially says “Hey, look at what a good person I am, I’m so damn giving!!” This definitely is a “personal bug” of mine, I would not think that of anyone else, who takes the lead. But I don’t feel very comfortable taking the “role model” place. I hope you understand. Maybe I’m not the only one with this “bug”, who’d prefer to donate anonymously, so if that option would exist, that might serve the cause, too.
I trust you, @Kaja, with the all-important ask of finding people for whom a little extra cash would make the difference between being able to come or not. That does not make you “the donor”, you are just running the show. If you prefer, you can run it pseudonymously. In fact, you already are. We all are. You identify yourself on the Edgeryders platform as “Kaja”, which might be your real name of not. For me it’s the same, you know me as “Alberto”.
Kaja and Alberto might be pseudonyms, but they are labels of identities with a trackable history in the Edgeryders community. Yours: https://edgeryders.eu/en/users/kaja. So, we can be private while still engendering trust. And look: you already have 2-3 people who trust you to allocate wisely and with integrity a little bit of their money (and none of us has much of it). It works!
It’s not like we are speaking of large sums… can I propose you stick with your idea tentatively? If you find it too difficult or stressful, you can always ask for help.
I think this works @Kaja, thanks so much. What will happen is that while the spreadsheet is public, it’s mainly of interest to people in the network, so it doesn’t scare people off too much. It also gives us a way to see what is happening - one looks at listed contacts there on both sides (offer, need) and is inspired to participate, which is what Alberto was saying, rightly so.
I would ask people in the document not to remove the offer, but signal that it found a match, or strikethrough. This still allows us to look at the amount of offers and the dynamic. Thank you, will follow your lead of course.
I don’t know who is Tintinn Abuli but I see in the google doc he offered tips for creating an irresistible CS requests. @Noemi can you tag him here so that he can post his tips on the platform?
A good option could be open 
Maybe that’s where I’m stuck. Don’t want to be the one who officially says “Hey, look at what a good person I am, I’m so damn giving!!” This definitely is a “personal bug” of mine, I would not think that of anyone else, who takes the lead. But I don’t feel very comfortable taking the “role model” place. I hope you understand. Maybe I’m not the only one with this “bug”, who’d prefer to donate anonymously, so if that option would exist, that might serve the cause, too.
