Global Melt/Newbies

Participants: Bogo, Nadia, Agatha, Asaf

Definition of event:

• Physical event
• Online event
• Recurring events (meetups) or multiple-mini-events (travelling event), distributed events

Audience / Type:

• Common value
  • Exposure to ideas
  • Inspiration
  • Empowerment to participate as consequence of attending
• For existing community
  • Building trust and good faith where only shared values are already guaranteed
• Outreach, friend-finding
  • Finding partners, supporters, networking
  • Sometimes hard to define/express the profile of people you want to attract, but forming an event around your values can attract the right kind of people
• For different community
• Workshop or barn-raising

Tools:

• Pre-event:
  • Informing people about the event ‚Äì attracting attendees
  • Get out of the do-it-yourself haze and respect your own time -- Enlist local networks (chamber of commerce, local press (free documentation!), CouchSurfers, social networks)
• post-event: follow-up on opportunities created.
  • Own the follow-up
  • Record ‚Äúsparks‚Äù on poster (voluntarily), have organizers follow-up
    • Organizers follow-up two months later (reminding, updating peers and inspiring)
    • Match-make and align Sparklez
    • Organizers can inter-network if sparks got stuck (‚Äúcan anyone think of funding sources for this great spark by these great folks?‚Äù)
    • Generalize need for tools

• Easier to join a global movement, harder to start/join/grow a local community
• How to connect local relevance to global identity/ambitions
  • There‚Äôs a dual identity ‚Äì local community member, and participants in global movement
• Global movement and aligned non-branded local groups

Questions:

• What can a global movement gain from a local event?
  • ‚Äúglobal‚Äù is an abstract aggregation; ‚ÄúStories are local!‚Äù
  • Legitimacy ‚Äì can‚Äôt represent your concerns and mission without supporting stories
  • Local events can be cultivated into shining examples to be used as reference
  • Local events inspire other local events ‚Äì motivate peers
  • Provide a venue and opportunity to get work done, to resolve something within the community, outside HQ
  • Sources of grassroots innovation, later exportable globally
  • Local partnerships not available/practicable on a global level, later exportable
  • Serendipitous, person-to-person chemistry, can create partnerships not visible and therefore not attempted on global level
  • Easier to mix-and-match and create ad-hoc alliances for events
• What can a local community gain from affiliation with a global movement
  • Branding
    • Prestige and credibility
    • Sense of identity
  • Resources (funding, swag, speakers, contacts)
  • Know-how
  • Borrow context from global initiatives
  • Credibility through parallel activities worldwide

Summary of insights:

• Joining a global movement is easier than building a local community
• Global gives local: branding (prestige, credibility, sense of identity); resources (funding, swag, speakers, contacts); know-how; current contexts from parallel, global activities
• Local gives global: stories are local!; legitimacy (actual work); motivate weaker peers; opportunity for f2f work outside HQ; sources of exportable innovation; local partnerships or ad-hoc alliances not visible/available at HQ;
• Major tool: Globally coordinated, locally consumed movement recipe book for success:
  • Step-by-step
  • Tutorials
  • Formulas