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789, I want to hitch with Frankenstein
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November Newsletter
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The Newsletter itself
This newsletter is targeted at participants of the 888 project and/or to people that showed interest in 789 project. It deals mainly with planning the event. Input from everyone is welcome. Below you find a draft version, feel free to edit.
English
Title: 789 Newsletter: Hitchhikers combine!
When was your last hitch-hiking trip? Looking forward to the next? Why not head out across Europe this spring? The weather is getting (mostly) better, the days are getting longer: no need to wake up so early and if it does rain... well, kind drivers won't leave you standing for long! Who needs to wait for summer?
Not only that, but your trip will get your thumb in shape and your mind in gear for this year's European Hitchhiking Festival, taking place on 7th August (789). After much discussion and voting, this year's festival will take place on the Black Sea in Odessa, Ukraine.
Website
The site address will be http://the789project.eu . For the moment, we have only a draft site up, redirecting to our coordination forum. As soon as possible, it should have the main site and hold all the information for those interested in the event. All we need is a Drupal/CSS artist with some time on his hands. We need YOU!
Coordination
However controversial it might be, a Google Group has been created to help coordinate the festival. Please take a look here. Anyone can join and everyone is invited and encouraged to.
Getting in touch with the community
Of course, we want to be in close touch with the hitchhiking community in Ukraine and the local community in Odessa. Some of us have contacted the Elba Ukrainian hitchhikers' gathering</a> (site in Russian, English auto-translation), that takes place three times a year. The next one will be from the 24th to the 26th of April, but unfortunately we ran into a cold war with them (just like in the good old days...). So you could perhaps offer an olive branch over there (in Russian too, English auto-translation ).
The hospex (ie. CS) community of Odessa has given a warmer welcome. We hope to find support in organising the festival by working with the local authorities as much as possible.
Slogans: seven, eight, nine!
789 needs a great tagline, a sentence that grabs the attention immediately, is easy to remember and great to use. When we were in Paris for last year's European Hitchhiking Day it was: "8/8/8 - Paris wants you for a nomadic date". Having a good catchphrase for 789 is not sooo important, but that's the kind of really fun brainstorming that we love to do. Check this out and feel free to participate.
Odessa calling
789 doesn't need to be overly organised. On the other hand, the more we can sort out between now and August, the more trouble we will save ourselves when we are there and don't want to worry about troubles. You can help the festival to be a greater success by telling all your friends and spreading the word, and of course by joining the discussion on the coordination channels. Namely: The hitchwiki page and the coordination group. Right now we have more or less 7 people involved in the organisation. It would be great if the 150 of 888 would join as well... sign up today!
888 Movie Early August 2008. Radek, Pascal, Martin and Lily embarked on a hitchhiking adventure to Paris. One common goal united them: to arrive under the Eiffel Tower on August 8th to be part of the first European Hitchhiking Week. The movie is not released yet, but here you can see a trailor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJj1oWlVJTY
Happy hitching!
French
Russian
Deutsh
Notes
The vote on the forum / Reaching a consensus
There's already a vote going on on the forum. This vote should not be binding but rather consultative. The best would be to reach a consensus through discussion and keep the vote for last resort (if we can't agree).
The voting stays open as a permanent opinion survey (you can edit your vote). For now 38 people gave their voice to the voting already, most of them voted for Ukraine, mainly Odessa. So it looks like it'll be Ukraine, but if you're convinced that another place is so much better, make yourself heard.
Local welcome
One particularly sensible point is: how the local citizenry and administration feel towards us. If the third most popular choice shows to have a really cool mayor that wants nothing more than a crowd of hitch-hikers, then we should go for them.
For that, we need support from the local communities. It would be a good idea to contact the local people with whatever tool available in the, say top 6 cities, and see if they can find an arrangement with the people they elected.
