Global Melt/Newbies

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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
Global movements, local communities
  • 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