Agenda Wintermeeting 2010

Before we start any discussions

Assign facilitator, time-keeper, note-taker......and on that note:

Documenting

Taking notes! Really Helpful.

Write down briefly :

• discussions had
• action points
• all decisions made
• briefly explain why
• add things to the 'road map'

Friday night / Saturday morning

===Sharing Organising Experience=== Bringing laura & moritz up to speed on organising how things work: finances, website, wiki, applications, visas what was most stressful as an organiser what was most fun about organising what would you definitely not reccomend what would you definitely do again (what was most helpful!) Laura has a lot of questions, and would appreciate continuous feedback if ever you remember stuff later (no matter how seemingly irrelevant!)

Saturday afternoon / evening

National Co-ordinators & local organisations

Their roles Brainstorm The idea of static nerd-and-or-media-support

Getting a (sailing?!) boat from UK-->Continental Europe

Does everyone like this idea? (Laura does) How can we move forward on this idea?

Aim

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat

What on earth do we want to achieve - how do we want to do it ?

Theme

Collection of ideas, brainstorm, Workshop: ie. Climate Justice/or other theme?

How the f***

how do we realistically achieve want we want to achieve Make the goals SMART

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timely

Go back and change Everything if it makes is SMARTer.

Biketour's name & tagline

brainstorm, laura has some nice ideas to help us brainstorm

Sunday

Process

Daily Routine during BT

Bring together some good ideas to try out; both for cycling days & action or workshop or rest days

Looking at previous evalutations + avoiding making the same mistakes

Learning from those who came before - Yes, hindsight is a beautiful tool. Let's stop and reflect, and address these things ! evalutation of 2009: http://btwiki.ecobytes.net/Meeting_minutes/Felt_the_heat

evalutation of 2008: http://btwiki.ecobytes.net/Lessons_learned - Actions Some of the actions we did in 2008 were very unsatisfying. Our local contacts did not take the time to explain the group in detail what he action was about. The actions were often not very well prepared and it was unclear what the role of Biketour was. Sometimes we were just hanging around (eating icecream…) while the local persons were having heated discussion with people on the street and we had no idea what it was all about. How to improve: better a few good and well prepared actions than many ill-prepared actions. If not well prepared beforehand, maybe better no action at all. (although not everybody will agree on this I guess)

- Distances and planning Niklas: One of the ideas from the evaluation was NOT to bike less kilometers as a cycling day is a cycling day, anyway. Instead, we should have three days of intense cycling in a row, without meetings that are not really urgently necessary - and than more than just one rest day, but a real rest day to relax, play volleyball, have time to talk to each other etc. PLUS a kind of workshop / learning day together with a local community or initiative to learn from each other and the communities we pass PLUS action days - but these together with local people that know the situation and from who we were able to learn about the local situation before. Combined action-workshop-rest days yield neither successful actions, nor nice workshop nor do they enable us to really relax. How to improve: separate days for cycling, resting, actions and workshops. Also obviously: distances not too long (depending on climate, mountains etc.), and no longer than 3 days of cycling in a row.

- Consensus based decision making One of the basic points of how Biketour is functioning, but also a major frustration. Halfway Biketour 2008 we had an evaluation meeting. One of the most important outcomes was the inefficiency and waste of time of the circles. So it is very important to try to make them better, because it is a frustration for many people during Biketour! I think it is important to realise that consensus based decision making does take time. Think about it when making a planning, every few days has to have an extended circle. On Ecotopia we came to the conclusion that these extended circles, where there is more time to talk in depth about certain topics, are important. For example, the topic of sexual harassment only was discussed at Ecotopia, after Biketour was finished. Only then it became clear how many of us (that is, the female part) had negative experiences in Turkey. If we would have had opportunity to discuss this before, perhaps we could have taken better measures as a group. Concluding: time for communication during Biketour is important, but it should be concise and efficient. How to improve: The measures we came up with in the midterm evaluation: - Have short circles every day only for route and tasks, and longer circles every few days - Delegate tasks to groups! Not everybody has to discuss the planning of the day or the route, a small group can discuss it and propose something. The rest should trust that group and mostly agree. - Have a training (best at the beginning of Biketour) on consensus based decision making, and what it means: more than just hand signs.

- Organisation Yolanda: we need to find one NGO host organization in one of the countries of next biketour before nov and I reaaaaally think it is superimportant to apply for EVS before 1 nov. If you really care about the sanity of this EVS person.... If there would be any problem and it is not possible to do it in time we can still ask for EVS before 1 jan (start 1 may) but then it should be 2!!! persons taking this job. How to improve: start organisation on time

- Women’s Biketour This is a funny idea some girls had on the way. Because… why is it often/always the guys who cut the wood, make the fire, fix the bikes, lift a bike over a fence…? Are women comfortable to get help, or do they sometimes feel a bit pushed aside? Is it nice that somebody is helping you, or is it affecting your self-confidence to be able to solve your own problems? Why do some girls feel better when a girl is explaining them, than when a guy is just taking it over? An interesting idea was to organise a women’s Biketour. It could for example be the first week of Biketour: only for women. But actually I doubt if it’s really going to happen, if anyone really wants to organise this.

evaluation of bt 2004 that I (laura) found on the wiki, there's a whole page of their evalutation meeting [1] positive : - good number of participants ~ 50 - no truble makers - good distances - the visit of the carfree conference, wendlandcamp, lacoma, ecofarms - coreans joined - austria - cool, lots of actions - not so structured negative : - language problems, so people were not included in decision making - too longdistances sometimes - the same morning circle discussions came back after some weeks - not so many tours through the sleeping places - few actions - no update of the website, when the tour started - biketour was not visible, nobody knew, what we stand for - few flyers informing the public about bt - bad welcoming of newcomers - visas did not work - almost no route testing - bad infoflow about/with sleeping places - money confusion about how much money we can spend proposals for next year - combine lunch meetings in cities/ parks with small selforganised actions - banners, flyers, presswork - affinity group system - for giving everybody the chance to speak up in a small group, giving newcomers a easy point to link into bt, asign tasks to affinity groups - more workshops - more candle circles - a circle more about feelings, the candle goes aroundin the circle and only the person with the candle can speak - make morning circle minutes - workshop about facilitation - mark bt-stuff - have working phone numbers on the tour and update the website - explain the participants better, what bits and stands for - join a motivation piece into the application - for big cities - they are always a pain - have a good map for everyone, stay near that townthe night before - try to get good maps - have a common bt repair kit on the tour - develop a performance or action, which bt can do everywhere - that could be a task for an affintity group - share moreresponsibilities, so that organisiers arenotso stressed out, for organisers: step back ,do not feel responsible for everything - leave space for inspiration

• Ecorates & participants fees

Applications

-include a motivation section -interested/eligible in organising BT2011 ? -look at the applications of other biketours + activist projects

• email lists & moderation
• decision making processes

rapid response, organiser's contact details?

• minimum participation days/ set joining days

Outreach

• General outreach strategy
• recruiting

how to get new participants! Biketour presantations on eco-meetings/summits/places were activists are Thinking about co-ordinator recruitment for *Biketour 2011 (laura) Ukraine? Baltic states? EVS or funding applications writing?

• media
• getting BT articles in newspapers + blogs
• make a basic video here & now for BT!
• What things we need "training" in at the start of the biketour:

-theme of biketour -successful groups are thanks for successful meetings -concensus decision making -getting to know eachother -languages -facilitating -bicycle repair -travelling vegan cooking -dumpster diving -open space Brainstorm on who do we think would do hold these workshops

• website updates, wiki, facebook, social networks

Logistics

• Budget

both minimum & most ambitious

• Fundraising
• BT hardware

Trailer, cooking equiptment, bike repair stuff.. Do we have it; how is it getting to the starting point

• Best kind of bicycle to get
• instruction booklet
• tshirts/bags/patches/screenprinting biketour-propaganda stuff mainly for participants!
• Think about all those extra things

To do with process, route, co-ordinators...If at the end of the biketour you say or think 'oh, if only we'd done....' or 'this could always have been done better......' !

Where to from here?

• Organise next skype call, and/or next in-person meeting

Make a road-map (timeline) for the organisation of BT2010

laura would really love this. concentrating on the next few months, but include a plan to have an evaluation meeting, next evs applications, the rest of the year, important things to have in biketour (evaluation halfway?)