Council / Booth Coordinator Joint Meeting 10-29-2020
Maggie P, Linda M, Jain, Lareina, Kelsey, Nathan, Margaret Alexander, Dyan, Tim
Brief notes from Thursday’s Council / Booth Coord gathering
Because the OCF is planning for both a real Fair and another virtual one, we are too. Some of us will still need to be considering working for a real Fair. But we know for sure that the first meetings in 2021 will still be virtual, and we hope to not lose connections between us that are so important. This meeting focused mostly on creating a good virtual world for ourselves and trying to find ways to include those for whom that is difficult or impossible to participate in.
Booth To Do:
Get activists ready to assist with Booth webpage content
Consider joint booth meetings to share activist hints and info
Ask members to volunteer for the Virtual Fair Team 2021
booth web pages for activist listings –
With the purpose of providing a CV based access portal to activist group’s messages, Tim and Nathan (and any other web volunteers – you?) will create a CV web page for each booth based on information in the Village Connectory. Web links in the document will be activated on the web page and photos of the booth, if available, will be included. Project completion scheduled for January 31. At that time or before Booth Coords will be notified that their page is ready. Booth members can then view and submit changes to the web team (Tim), including additional new content. Plus each page will include a comment section at the bottom where interaction can take place.
Helping maintain community in the virtual world –
This discussion considered how to make our Village meetings more compelling to maximize attendance, to possibly have joint booth meetings of booth combinations, should we develop a Village meeting with both in-person attendance and a large screen for Zoom attendees, and other related questions on the posted survey with 28 responses so far.
A main principle supported was to allow individuals to make their own choices about what to attend.
Brainstorming produced these ideas for Village meeting agendas that might engage more people (you are welcome to respond with more ideas):
- Allow time for longer activists reports – 20-30 minutes even. Such “reports” might include screen shared videos or other online content…a plant walk from Wild Edibles was mentioned, as was a cooking demonstration with the wild food.
- Invite guest presentations/speakers including Zak’s Human Intervention Training (?), new OCF Board members, diversity oriented or consensus trainings…
- Having entertainment (Cassandra??), especially if there is an in-person meeting.
- Watching a movie together…a documentary, maybe, or something related to a mission we share, followed by a discussion. Up to 45 minutes long. Riley’s Story was mentioned, along with other Sprout Film subjects.
- We had a discussion about fundraising. We usually collect money at each meeting for the kids. We likely won’t be needing that, but we could collect money for non-profit groups, fire impacted places or people, or Village members impacted by the fucking horrible year. An option was to develop an application, have a monthly drawing from them to award the collected money, with a minimum of $50 – $100. No decision was reached. This will be on the January meeting agenda.
Joint booth meetings received tepid survey response, but each Booth Coord will discuss the idea with booth members in the new year.
Tim had connected with Kaj at Whirled Pies and discussed ideas to hold a combo in-person and Zoom meeting there. His response was positive, noting that he has a large screen with a sound booth projector to connect with a laptop to display Zoom windows, and would not charge us money, but would allow other customers to enter. We would need to provide a remote video and microphone setup so in-person folks could speak. It also might be a good time to include a live music set as part of the meeting. We all had a wait-n-see attitude about this, but thought it could be cool with limited attendance.
What about folks who can’t connect online?
We talked about reaching out somehow. Tim talked with Karla the next day. She suggested folks with useable devices could possibly gather in their cars in a parking lot with good cell reception (or a Comcast Hotspot) and possibly share her Verizon Hotspot to access WiFi. She is gonna experiment and get back to us. People could be together like a drive in…
That doesn’t help folks with crappy or no devices. But any kind of phone can still get you in, so… Other ideas??
Should we adapt eligibility requirements for 2021?
If there is a real Fair, we will need some, but there was little interest in the meeting to define them. Some survey respondents offered to help… If there is a virtual Fair only, people excited to participate can, others are not compelled to…which is why we make to make participating fun!
Please respond with edits, additions or feedback.
Tim Mueller
Community Village Coordinating Council
Community Village 