[HacktionLab] Bringing together two different visions

[mark]

Thanks Mick for those suggestions and Brent for the wiki-edits, and
thanks to everyone who's come forward to volunteer. Can I just remind
you all that in order to be contactable via the wiki, you need to have a
valid email address registered.


I can see that we now have two rather different, branched visions for an
event floating about. Let's call them B for Barncamp E for bEancamp.
Let's take a look at how these came about, and the relative merits of
each, in the hope we can find a way of merging them and moving forward.

B was based on what we'd learnt from experience [1] and from a survey
after the last event [2]. In an off-list group of 13 people who'd
expressed an interest, I proposed on March 26th, "that we try to do
BarnCamp using the patterns and methods that we're familiar with, and
our first move should be to ask Highbury Farm and Sam (our ace caterer)
for some dates that would suit them, from mid-June onwards.
PLEASE SAY NOW if you think this isn't the best way to start, or you
have a counter-proposal, etc."

There were no counter-proposals, blocks or stand-asides, one agreement
and some comments e.g. about setting the target for number attendees. So
some of us set to work on trying to make B happen. Many hours of work
have been done. We have agreed with the farm that they will cater for
about 50 people.

E first came up on this list on March 22nd, but no-one brought it up
again in the email consensus-forming exercise described above. One might
have inferred that reading the fine manuals [1] [2] had dissuaded anyone
from pursuing it further. But when your volunteer facilitators Naomi and
I where at the point of abandoning A due to low engagement, E came up as
again as an alternative and was helpfully fleshed out a bit by Mick.

So we now have some ideas for what both A and E would involve. I don't
think that either of them are viable as they are, for these reasons:

B will fail because not enough people have committed themselves to
finding all the necessary kit, beverages and so on, or bringing a van to
get it all there.

E will fail because it ignores some things we know from experience:

 - we can't rely on the single-phase 13A supply in the barn (even before
we started running a cable out to the field, 8 laptops and a coffee
machine was too much for it)

 - we can't self-cater because that creates a situation where there's a
queue of people waiting to cook or wash up for themselves when there
should be workshops starting, it's energy-inefficient, time-wasting,
food-wasting, and some people will just give up and go to the pub. Also,
last time we were there we encouraged the farm to develop their catering
capacity, they've been out and bought the gear to do this, so we have a
bit of a moral obligation there.

 - we can't not have a bar because people coming by public transport
can't carry all that they'll drink in 5 days, and in the past the bar
has covered losses made elsewhere

 - not having advance payment means people aren't as fully committed and
are more likely to not turn up, e.g. if the weather looks bad, leaving a
lot of wasted food and cash deficit (we have the stats to show this),
also no money to spend in advance e.g. for bar stock, see above.

 - we can't all bring an extension cable and 4-way because of limited
rucksack space


So, I hope I've explained where the holes are in both of the competing
visions here. If you've read this far you can see that I've been doing
too much of the work, so in the interests of decentralisation I'm now
going to step back a bit and let someone else have a go at putting the
pieces together.

Cheers,
Mark


[1] https://mbharris.co.uk/articles/barncamp-a-diy-skillsharing-event/
[2] https://hacktionlab.org/BC2017survey

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