I am getting everything ready for the 2 meetups, Belgrade and Becej.
The Belgrade one is set, still contacting people who might find all this interesting, waiting for venue confirmation tomorrow. Have more than 10 people coming, that’s already enough for me.
Will be Friday 19h.
For Becej I went with Becej Youth Club over the last week and that was a bad idea it seems, they haven’t shown real interest. Changed approach to individuals and got 4 people this week.
I can still post an open call to the Becej facebook page, considering doing that but I might get more people than I can manage, without having a proper venue to do it on such short notice.
(will see tomorrow if I can pull off a proper venue for it)
In any case, meetup will be held Saturday 15h.
I would prefer a smaller one first though and, if needed, travel back once to do a bigger one.
Also one thing I think could be awesome is get a high school as partner. I will try to meet the principle of Becej Gymnasium on friday morning and see what can be done it that direction…very hard to get things done on such short notice. Regarding that I will forward the proposal @noemi made.
Hei Jasen, do you mean this Saturday (21st September)?
Best advice I can give you is to have a sidekick, so you don’t have to facilitate and document at the same time - ask someone ahead of the meeting, perhaps someone you already know? to take notes and help with facilitation. Especially if you’ll be doing the Listening Triads - that’s the way you can get people to easily write thoughtful stories that they can just edit afterwards and post. This sidekick can go around the groups and ensure participants take notes,
If, instead, you are recording or doing some other documentation, then another person can also help make sure the logistics are in place.
Can we help in any way?
PS I took the liberty to move your post in Wellbeing - Workspace for easier access…
Thanks Noemi, already have good help there on the spot.
Great help would be to have a flyer, as I mentioned before, about Edgeryders and festival we are planning. It’s extra engagement and a direct way to get to the web site. Impact x 5 I promise you.
I understand we can’t have it now though because we need to know more about the festival i guess but it would be very helpful in future to think of that.
A momentary solution would be something like a google form. So if I do an event, with internet access I can easily get people to fill the form on my IPAD.
Form could be structured in such a way to simply allow them to tell a story. We can add optional thing at the end: leave us your mail if you want to join the community and we will gladly invite you or similar.
I thought of having 2 people helping, recording the stories on their phones (tested and it works quite well). Afterwards they can send them to me. That might be the least invasive way, simply because we set the phone on the table and talk.
Ok here is the update:
So last week I organised in a rush few meetups in Serbia for the wellbeing festival. Was tough and many people finally couldn’t show up as well because it was done on such a short notice. I waited for third party input for 4 days, I never received it but it delayed the meetup organisation for that long so it hampered me a lot.
My take on those 3 busy days:
Day 1 in Belgrade: only 5 people but a great core group I feel. I talked about Edgeryders and Wellbeing in Europe, they introduced themselves and what is it they care about really. Then we brainstormed about various ways in which we could improve the quality of life. Some very interesting proposals were made. I think the Belgrade part of festival is quite feasible.
Day 2 in Becej: very disappointing for me because a lot of people said they will come. Spoke with only 3 people but out of 3 all were great really. All three had successful stories so I really hope they post them here as examples how things can be done when you want it and work hard for it.
One has an interesting story, is a member of Serbian inventors association, has a great set of skills and is full of ideas. He proposed I do a meetup with the Serbian inventors association and that would be great.
The other is a triathlon pro, 1st place on many competitions and quite entrepreneurial.
Third one started brewing kraft beers in his cellar, now he opened quite a nice pub where he sells his beer too…and he built almost everything in his pub. He also will connect me with his sister, who works in high school and is an activist. She often does educative workshops for kids and parents etc.
Turns out a friend of mine worked 4 yeas in gymnasium there (I wasn’t aware) so that will be of great help if we are to involve 17 and 18 year olds in doing a workshop in Becej during the Wellbeing festival.
In Novi Sad I did an event for something else I am working on but I used the opportunity to talk about Edgeryders as well. Top people there would be a young very entrepreneurial couple and a social entrepreneur who created https://bankavremena.org.rs/ . Timebank is another try at creating an economy based on direct exchange of services. knowledge etc. He also does workshops on entrepreneurship, startups etc.
Hopefully with them we can do something interesting in Novi Sad.
I didn’t have time for testing my approach of interviewing people on the river banks. Too bad, I would have enjoyed a nice walk in sunshine. 3 events in 3 cities in 3 days was very tiring.
