The dry stuff: basics of event organsation

In order to plan an event , you need to deal with the usual issues:

Place:

we chose Agora, because. they support groups and events that are trying to develop new solutions to old and new problems (they are close to our heart/ and read-me) Agora has 3 floors:

  • Ground floor: Café 125 m2, seating 50 people, beamer+sound system, toilet
  • first floor: large co-working space with desks, one small separate office space, toilet
  • top floor: 125 m2, open plan, beamer+soundsystem, toilet
  • Garden: tables+chairs, no toilet
    For more details about the premises ask @Lars2i .

@Alice_audrey will check if we can have a luggage space avaiblable for participants?

Speaker’s backspace for the organisers (safe) in the small room on 1st floor.
@transitionmaike will talk to EcoToi/ Marchella fo Agora tocheck if we can have a dry toilet for the garden.

Toying area (on ground floor?): modular toys (lego, stabilo, fisher technik+ universal connectors for them freshly printed on premises

Creative area outdoors:
@transitionmaike and @Timm will contact MaterialMafia and KunstStoffe, consult with Prinzessinnengarten (Robert Shaw) and Agora.
Timm has access to lots of bicycle parts, Maike has access to tools.
Upcycling-challenge: create useful and artistic items out of used parts (bike-trailer, furniture, sculpture…)
Call for materials: screws, nails, wood, cloth

Time:
doors will open at 9am, close 7pm, evening programme takes place elsewhere.
Agora will take care of opening/ closing
Task: Adopt a floor 1-2 people are responsible to check on each floor/ garden (make sure people have everything/ collect things that have been left behind in the evenings).

People:
Let’s have someone in charge for different tasks during the event (while we all feel responsible, only someone to keep an eye on/ an overview over a specific, well-defined area of responsibility, e.g. participant information, nice atmosphere, technical support, press…)
Desposit a list of people resposible @ help-desk by the entrance (inclunding phone-no)

Finances:
We need a solid calculation:

  • how much do we have to spend (minimum)?
    The main expenditure are the costs for renting the space. Agora is offering us a very reasonable, heavily discounted price which just covers their costs, as we are a project which is aligned with the Agora Collective’s values. This covers the costs of having an Agora staff member on hand, having the bar open, room rental, insurance and liability costs, etc. Costs for technical equipment are mostly included into rent for the place.
    There may be some minor costs for transport, office material. Let’s not underestimate those, they add up. ?Maybe costs for renting a toilet from EcoToi??

As we don’t have a lgeal entity for it, all money (from the sponsors) is processed by Agora, we pay 5% of the sponsoring sum for that.
Sponsors so far: Veolia, Berlin Partner (+ 2?)

Information on finances is with @Alice_audrey
The calculations will be documented transparently in the owncloud (please ask @cameralibre for access).

For the future events, tools for collaborative finance planning should be included into the platform software. Until then we use libre office.

----old questions& answers on finances----

  • How much would we like to be able to spend (ideal).
    The budget outlay which we have been sharing with sponsors can be seen in our Berlin sponsorship brochures.

  • How do we share this?
    We can share our budgets and core costs with a .ods file stored in the OSCEdays Berlin Cloud folder. This file is editable with the free and open word processor LibreOffice, and is synched by the ownCloud desktop client. Relevant Tutorial (part II) is here, Tutorial Part I is almost finished. Message @cameralibre on the forum for a login.

  • We need transparent fund-raising
    But we also need some space for internal discussion of fundraising, negotiation and approaching different potential sponsors, clients etc. We may want to test the waters with different sponsorship packages and companies to see what fits best, who might be interested etc, before making final decisions.

@Alice_audrey , @Lars2i, & @cameralibre have approached a few companies for sponsorship (based on the sponsorship brochures) and so far have two deals which should allow us to cover the costs for the venue. Contracts have not yet been signed so I’m leaving names and figures out for now. In our negotiations we are guided by the values set out in our README and Mission Statement (eg knowledge generated during the event cannot be locked up by a sponsor, it must be released as open content). Preliminary details of progress and deals are visible to the OSCEdays Berlin team in a post in the private Berlin-Internal category. If you’re co-organising the Berlin event and you can’t access this subcategory, just let @cameralibre know!

Frans has also begun applying for funds from foundations, we will see if any of them are able to help us out before the June event (Foundations don’t tend to move that quickly!)


Logistics

  • What do we need to bring to the event (food, office stuff, equipment…)
  • How do we do that and when?
  • Who will do it?

So far 7 challenges are confirmed, none of them has special requirements in materials

Any tools needed, please contact @transitionmaike to see if we cann borrow them from *Leila

Legalities

  • What about insurance? Which ones do we (still) need? Which ones do we have?
    With our Agora-contract we’re covered by their event insurance. @Alice_audrey will check what exactly is insured.

  • How about safety (Fluchtwege)? What is the max legal number of people on each level/ in each room?

  • What about accidents during workshops? Do we need some first aid personnel?
    responsibility is with the challengers to remind their participants of careful conduct (normally nothing more is needed, we’re all adults) @Timm and @Alice_audrey will do a security breefing with the cahllengers if necessary.

  • what about documents that are not (yet) open source: textile challenge has a paper to distribute for the participants in advance: clearly state that it doesn’t yet have a cc-lincence, make available in owncloud.

Food/ Drink

  • The contract with agora includes longer opening times of the bar/ in house catering: people buy their food at the bar themselves (own supplies are allowed on the premises)

(other options are not suitable this time: foodsharing, potluck, self-catering, sponsores snacks…)

Event Information:
There will be a leaflet/ Flyer to distribute (? from tomorrow?)
A programme is under way, compiled by @Lars2i
We will need this programme online and in print @ help-desk

Do we need anything more in terms of information on display for participants? Signs, logos, floorplan, or little displays with challenge names for the tables etc?

Do we still need to buy whiteboards or some reusable whiteboard plastic? where do we get it from? Modulor?

Who will be at the front desk during the event? I kind of assumed that we would just take turns and then find someone else to take over when we want to leave, but has anybody discussed this or decided anything already?

@transitionmica, I have made your post a Wiki - this way we can all edit the list structure that you have created, and it allows people like @Marcela_Donato and @Alice_audrey (who have a very good understanding of the particular set-up and and processes at Agora) can share their thoughts with the rest of us.

Note: Anybody who edits the wiki, please then write a (very brief) reply in the thread mentioning what you added/removed and why. You can edit a wiki post by clicking on the :pencil2: (edit) button below the original post (not the pencil at the top right, that just shows the edit history of the post).

Added my thoughts and some links to the financial questions. If it doesn’t make sense or if you have questions, just ask them in this thread.

Thanks for the instruction, found it and tried it (added a bit on minimum finances)

added a link to sponsorship details for Berlin-Internal group members.

Added bits and pieces to clarify what I meant, my thoughts on toilets and the new section ‘food’

next week the latest we should discuss the practicalities to make sure that we don’t run into trouble. Let’s put them onto the to do list for the coming meeting.

added a lot tonight during the meeting, please read all if you want to know.

I started a wiki to help organise last minute tasks and exchange essential information, hope people will use it: https://pad.oscedays.org/p/last-minute-orga

@cameralibre @Lars2i
Hi!
In addition to taking turns at the front desk I’ll also have more time than anyone else to be at the front desk if necessary, as I’m not directly involved in any of the Challenges.
Friday from 2 pm, Saturday, Sunday. Also a friend is coming to help/ check out the event on Saturday.
BADGES: I could go get them at Betahaus anytime as I live nearby. But I don’t know whom to contact (better by phone?..), whose idea it originally was.
WHITEBOARD: How big should they be and how many? So far I have one 55*35 cm.

I think the right person to contact for the badges is @MartinaSkender ?

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She contacted SustDrinks a few times, but couldn’t get through so far.
But she wasn’t the first person to ask them. I wonder who it was, who received their first OK to get the tags?

@Sophia maybe? Don’t know

@JuliaP, @MartinaSkender, @Lars2i

I was not in contact with them. Maybe @Alice_audrey?

@JuliaP @sophia @Lars2i OK! The mistery is resolved! :blush: Florian from SD discussed this issue with Christian Rudolph. SD are OK with this as long as they get the name tags back by 18th. Whoever can pick it up can contact florian [at] sustainabilitydrinks.de

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I got in touch with him already.

Hi guys,
Sami from the Maastricht team, Im trying to access the finance files to use them for our local event but the links seem broken…
@cameralibre @Alice_audrey is there something we could use for this at the moment?

Hi Samion, sorry for the late response. Sorry, nope, there is nothing at the moment to use. :-/