Jacob @kuba_svehla : from Prague, Czech Rep. Relative friend of Jirka. Studied Humanities at the Philosophical Faculty. Involved in Youth in Action a lot, fun times. They were wondering: is there some platform to go deeper into the discussions? When he heard about Wellbeing in Europe for the first time, thought it’s a modern way to go into these problems.
Interested in political correctedness - thinks it could be helpful to gather people closely.
Kajsa @kjolhsson: from Stockholm. 2nd year highschool student; major in Social Science with emphasis on Psychology; interest in Behavioral Science and Philosophy. Trying to figure out how to get more involved with other people.
Passionate about education, trying to get people to discuss how to make education better, how to spend more knowledge about different techniques of learning, help each student no matter the background.
@Richard: prof. at UCL; in terms of Wellbeing in Europe, interested how people react when they don’t feel a sense of wellbeing, particularly negative emotions - xenophobia, sexism etc… what we can do to limit those feelings. Thinks that psychological understanding of this is very important (Kajsa); and interacting with people from other cultures (Kuba)
London voted against Brexit because there’s more contact with others; so anti-immigrant movements less poignant there. Can counteract some of the tabloid headlines.
‘Unfortunately London is not like the rest of England’.
@Jirka_Kocian community manager for the Czech group; Center for Southeast European Studies;
Interested in how people get by with the issues presented to them without only relying on the system and the political discourse fed to them
@natalia_skoczylas: Polish community manager; just hired people to collect more stories; will soon be in Prague and Brno and hopes to reach people
Kajsa: perhaps i’m here because I’m disappointed in the politics somehow and how political discussions are being held.’ Was briefly active in the youth section of a party - enjoyed it, but feels like the party and ideology hinder people from seeing broader perspectives and hearing other people. Seeking more neutral environments where we can have open discussions about different topics.
Jirka: it’s something we are trying to achieve with the Czech platform - there’s a strong cleavage in society in the field of debates; Welbeing project to bridge over this gap, and re-construct the idea of the good and the bad, and meet somewhere in between. It’s a difficult thing to develop the language
Kajsa: It’s not about convincing people, but coming at the issue from different points.
Noemi: it’s challenging to engage people to contribute based on a neutral language. When we said ‘Europe is not well’ announcing an event in Czech, we got some backlash on facebook. Do we risk being perceived as watching over Europe from a distant point? What could we do?
Jiri: response was in English from the Edgeryders account, so it didn’t help. You have to come up with a very clear identity, and it wasn’t clear.
We should perhaps put primarily Czech issues at the forefront.
Kuba: it’s hard when you come on the site to see the benefits of the discussions;
Kajsa: language important. Write in Czech and also English, to symbolically show that it’s international
Jiri: can’t commit to host fb conversations
Virtual Cafes with a topic to be discussed with an invited guest
First one will be scheduled for later in July - 22nd TBC
Create facebook event + platform event in Polish only (Natalia, @AskaBednarczyk, @Mikomann).
Announce the event + guest with minimum with 1 week ahead
Promote stories from the platform in the facebook event page.
Format:
Community managers ask the guest expert questions: try to focus on the main speaker/interviewee (particularly when it is one of the main Fellow interviews, such as coming soon with Peter) and direct the others mainly to the chat for questions and comments. Much of the reason besides keeping a kind of focus, is to keep the time from getting away. An hour can go by pretty fast…
Jiri: thinks the format gets the personal touch we are missing so far.
People who decide to contribute to the platform get something extra: they are heard and made relevant than just posting
The curation for these calls can be divided into community manager.