6810/Berlin meeting/Minutes

6810 pre-meeting Berlin on 28th and 31st of May
Friday 28th of May we gathered in a meeting at the Rigaer105 (TeaHouse) in Berlin starting from 6 pm. The meetings will be occasion to:


 * Get to know each other or reconnect with already-well-known friends
 * Update about Locations
 * Talk about the latest news and about further organization
 * Decide together how we want to promote the 6810 at the Road Junky Festival
 * Distribute flyers for further lightfoot delivery and for friendly promotion.
 * reporting about Robin's spending money
 * discussing on what else to be printed (postcards, stickers, t-shirts, thanks cards)
 * deciding about further promotion
 * Brainstorming on what to do at the gatherings (workshops, culture building rituals)
 * Talk about integration between hitchgatherings (North America)

Minutes of the meeting of the 28th of May: Present people: Ben, Lucian, Valentina, Sandra, Felix, Diego…

Location

We gave a state of the art about possible locations. So far the scouted opportunities are: -	Lisbon (a newly-formed squat in the industrial area that can host up to 400 people, has got drinking water access, access to swimming pool, big store spaces) -	Porto (social center in danger of eviction in the city. Can host in the garden if they are still there in the summer) -	Espinho, water mill, with terrain and next to a forest and to the beach (5 km). Need to be confirmed. Can host 100 people -	Sintra (under discussion with land owners) -	GAIA community (In Lisbon, Odemira, Porto) to be investigated, camping allowed -	Costa de Caparica (shadowy place, very tourist, police could bother people camping) -	Aljezur (where Ecotopia was in 2009). Fernando is contacting the land owners. -	Sines (free camping for 100-200 people, facilities, wc, shadow, squattable house, showers, music festival just before the gathering,bbq and picnic tables, nature plus city/people for promotion).

There have been consensus on setting a deadline for June 15th to gather final permissions and more info about the lands. The most interesting places seems to be Espinho, Sines and Lisbon. Lucian proposes to have a 3 days meeting in Lisbon and then move to a more natural place like Espinho.

6810 pre-meeting Berlin on 13/14th of March
We started the meeting with an introduction-round. Present are :
 * Felix
 * Stefan
 * Valentin
 * Jennie
 * Elsy
 * Ben
 * Julien
 * Patryck
 * Sandra
 * Robin
 * Anja
 * Tau
 * Ralf
 * Mitch (via VoIP)

=Destinations= Talking first about the destinations. We give space to everyone to promote one place and then discuss the options again.

One of the points raised is that there isn't a good place to discuss the options on the website, there is the hitchwiki but people feel that isn't enough.

Points

 * We want a place somewhere where it is relatively easy for many people to hitchhike to
 * Pre-meetings can also be organised in easier to reach places and end-destination can be harder.
 * Idea: a challenge pre-meeting if the actual destination is rather easy

Destination Decision
Options for making a decision for a place:
 * We make a decision now based on the existing poll
 * We make a shortlist of the 3 most popular places and do a new vote
 * This would be combined with a forum discussion for people to put forward their ideas per destination (each place has their own topic) and people can put forward their proposals to organise this
 * For example: Someone steps up in terms of location and make it happen in terms of location (think Portugal).
 * A new voting based either on single-vote or multiple vote (people cast their preferences).
 * Voting only for three weeks max.

Pro

 * If we don't leave the meeting now without a decision of where we go, then we leave it unclear.
 * It is not possible to have every opinion reflected, there will always be other people.
 * Not to have people who just vote with their laptop without being involved.
 * We can do more work this weekend on the destination if we make a decision now.
 * The higher we get in terms of level of democracy, the more complex it may get.

Con

 * Old poll is based on suggestions from last year and the discussion is not reflected in the suggestions.
 * New ideas are not reflected in the current poll, like challenge pre-meetings
 * Maybe too complicated to vote?
 * We need to gather some more information first.
 * The poll was easy to manipulate. You just vote for your top favourite one and then vote for two others (or none) that are low on the list. Like this you can push top-destinations down.
 * Having another poll is another way of getting more people involved in the process and come up with their contributions whereas before they kept silent.

Criteria
Criteria for choosing the destination


 * Some kind of organisation/ network of people at the ground to help organising.
 * Speaks the language, can talk with authorities if needed.
 * Can help scouting for a place
 * To have a body of water around us to keep us clean
 * Easy to hitch to? Or is it a challenge?
 * This can be combined with pre-meetings
 * There are a lot of old HH'ers who like a bit of challenge - but it really doesn't come with "promoting HH'n to everybody". This promoting doesn't mean only "for local drivers", but also for people who don't make long distance hitchhiking - yet. When it's easy place to reach, they'll come and fall in love with it. :-) -Mikael 17:00, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Population center, like a city so we are not apart from the people but part of it.
 * Easy visa requirements so we can get as many people from different places as possible
 * Open space
 * Space to be free to walk around naked and not disturb someone
 * Space where we all can camp for free
 * Shouldn't be laws against what we do, like drinking in public
 * Price: not an expensive place/ dumpster friendly

Kaunas, Lithuania

 * there is no need to promote hitchhiking there.
 * it is on the main road, there is no challenge to hh there, no fun.
 * Good visa chanches for people from Russia

Vama Veche, Romania

 * no tourists.
 * you can put up your tent anywhere you want.
 * we can be compact, we can stay at one place.
 * we can also stay much longer. you don't have to go, you can stay if you want.
 * hitching needs promoting in Romania. Sometimes drivers ask for money.

Somewhere in Portugal

 * would like to hitch through Spain to promote hitchhing, it needs to be promoted there
 * also cheap country
 * need to prove that it is possible
 * Santiago de Campost road is there too. Maybe much hospitality on the way?
 * Pilgrims is industrial business there.


 * Promotional meeting can be held in Barcelona. It sounds as a good and easy options to get many people there, and have people to hitch from there to Portugal. Same counts for other places such as in the Basque Country and Madrid

Chişinău, Moldova

 * easy to get visa for People from Ukraine/Russia
 * They don't need visa at all :) --Platschi 10:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * good to hitch
 * Very close to last year, Odesa

Munster

 * internal promotion needed so to get more people
 * especially new people
 * need more central place for that

Iceland

 * if there is also a North-America hitchgathering we could decide to meet up in Iceland instead.

=Goals=
 * Promotion of hitchhiking
 * In the country where you hitch from
 * In the country we hitch to/ through
 * Local promotion
 * Promotion to the hitchhiking Community
 * To stimulate more community
 * To have more networking among hitchhikers, stimulate peer hospitality
 * To inspire more people to set up hitchhiking associations
 * Having a good time / fun / sharing
 * To travel
 * To show we can travel without money
 * To catch up with fellow hitchhikers
 * To exchange stories and skills
 * To have fun with each other
 * Meet hitchhikers from other countries
 * Try to get more connections with locals who live at the place where we're meeting
 * Somehow get them connected to what we're doing, inviting them to our gathering

=Funding= There is a possibility to get money from EU for Youth in Action. Stefen volunteers for this.
 * This is money we can use for promotion-material: website, posters, stickers, flyers, random roads
 * Not necessary to put logo on the public things. So you have to explain why you didn't do it. This program is not about the EU but about education and having more integration on of the event etc.
 * Needs to make a documentary about it
 * For each cent we spend we need to have a bill
 * Need someone to collect the bills/ make bills
 * We don't have to organise this with money. we always did it without
 * Need to put logo on promotion? But we don't have to put the logo on all promotion material. This is an EU-logo, might not attract all the people we would like. There is much opposition against using the logo of the EU
 * Later we found out: Not necessary to put logo on the public things. So you have to explain why you didn't do it. This program is not about the EU but about education and having more integration
 * Do we want to be affiliated to some kind of government institution? We are grass-roots. Are these two different things?


 * Money could be nice for promotion of the event
 * Donations
 * Mention it on a flyer for example

Conclusion for now
 * We deciced finally to get money from our own network, it means hh clubs, La Sophiste and Keliai Vis are already ok to give a part of the budget, we need a budget quicly !


 * Actually, I do not think it is a bad thing to put the EU logo on the stickers and stuff! I personally think, it is quite some creditability hitch-hiking activities can gain through this! But yes, it is this bottom-up and top-down and also the mainstram discussion... --Alex 14:48, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

=Day2= Today we are with:

Julien, Patryk, Robin, Anja, Tau, Sandra, Ben, Platschi, Mitch (via VoIP) & Stefan

Fundraising

 * Someone has to open an bank account
 * Stefan is proposing to open an account and use it for the gathering
 * We want to have clear on what exactly we want to use the money
 * But how do we value the money? It's to difficult to define a line on what to spend it and what not
 * We can at least try this year, if it turns out to be bad we can skip it in 2011. At least we tried and can say if it's good of not.
 * It's not clear if we want to have a consensus on this now or ask the community before
 * Probably the EU thing is not a good idea, we could better do some fundraising through the community.
 * We might only need cash for printing, sending flyers, random roads magazin -- probably the magazin itself can ask for the EU money
 * Conclusion: We want to get different hitchhiking related clubs etc. to join and promote/sponsor money maybe, but no EU money.

Promotion

 * We can print vcards to give out on to drivers
 * Waterbottles
 * We want to have an insane place with like 400 people +++

Coordination
reply by email.
 * Idea to have one website instead of two (hitchwiki&gathering site), robin wants to integrate hitchwiki to the gathering site.
 * Proposal is to disable the googlegroup and replace it with a coordination forum on hitchgathering site which is also an email list where you can
 * Let's have a monthly/frequent meeting on the IRC Channel

Destination

 * One proposal is near Sintra in Portugal (Cabo da Roca)

Timetable for the Week/Meeting
Sunday arrive in Barcelona (1st of August)
 * Monday main day Media attention in Spain (Barcelona)
 * Tuesday hitching out of Barcelona
 * Distance too Lisboa is too huge, 1200 km +
 * Pre-Events in Bilbao, Madrid or Valencia afterwards, depends where people hitch to on their way to Lisboa
 * Pre-Meetings before Barcelona could be Lyon, Perpignan, Strasbourgh, Switzerland, Amsterdam, Frankfurt
 * Coordinator for Barcelona
 * Somebody who speaks Spanish
 * Tau offers to do the communication in Spanish language
 * Sandra has a friend who works for El Mundo in Madrid

Website

 * Newsletter activated by default
 * Pour integration photos flickr, no way to solve it at the moment; beautiful facebook integration
 * Only problem is on pages fans cannot upload photos
 * Option to generate galleries on the website itself
 * Default licence CC, if people don't want to have CC licence pictures will not be public on website
 * Still need to organise/seperate 789/6810 content
 * Profiles private or public? Default hidden -- Option while registering to choose preferred option
 * Connections on the profile, like who hitchhiked with whom, etc.
 * Not a priority at the moment, kept for later
 * More media content: Already enabled video upload, galleries
 * Videos only for meeting related stuff
 * Tracking maps like where you gonna hitch, while hitching along your way to Lisboa people can connect
 * Translations
 * Translator can translate texts, and a editor can approve them.
 * Platschi will be translation coordinator
 * IRC Chat used from hitchwiki (freenode, #hitchhiking)
 * Keep design, just add banner/logo

Barcelona

 * hitchhike in Barcelona
 * make a huge thumb of cardboard and show it around the city

Portugal

 * Workshops