Pop-up Organizing

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Pop-up Organizing is a great way to bring together the IndieWeb community online for shorter single-topic discussions.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWeb meetups moved to online formats. The benefits of online events, including accessibility and relative ease of organization, will make them a good option for some events even after in-person events resume. This page collects best practices and guidance for creating and running online pop-ups.

Organizing an Event

Design the event

• Add an idea to the Pop-up Planning section
• Propose a date and time
  • Currently, the largest amount of IndieWeb event participants come from the United States and Europe, which means most attendees will stretch from GMT-8 to GMT+1, making it a challenge to find the ideal time. Some ideas and suggestions for time slots are below.
  • So far, the time that has worked the best has been a weekend at 9:30-10AM Pacific(GMT-8), which is 12:30-1PM Eastern(GMT-5), 5:30-6PM(UK/GMT), or 6:30-7PM European(GMT+1).
  • Schedule sessions on either UK or Pacific time based on the number of participants from each location.
  • Schedule a session as late as possible on UK time, for example 8 or 9PM, which would translate to 3 or 4PM Eastern, or 12-1 Pacific, making it a 'lunchtime' session for the Pacific individuals.
  • Schedule a session on a Friday at the 10am Pacific timeslot, which are "no at work meeting" days for some folks
  • The challenge of a weekday is that, most people's work schedules, the best option for weekday attendance is in the evening. HWC meetings have started between 5-7 PM local time. The European meeting is at a time that can be attended by both of the European timezones with the most Indieweb participants. The American meeting is currently on Pacific time, as the bulk of the attendees are in this time, but is still early enough for Eastern time attendance.
• Discuss in #indieweb-meta and encourage people to add their interest and votes for dates on the wiki
• Create an agenda for the event
  • Past pop-ups have run from 2 to 3 hours. The 2 hour meetings allow us to go a bit more in depth on a topic. Sessions of 1 or 1.5 hour could also be an option, especially for trying other time slots.
  • Allot 10-15 minutes at the beginning for welcoming and introductions
  • For events longer than an hour, incorporate a break (or two)
  • Consider breaking longer events into multiple sessions, with different subtopics (and possibly facilitators) for each
• Each event needs a facilitator and someone to run the Zoom (can be the same person)
  • If needed, get the Zoom login information from Aaron Parecki

Create event listings

Once enough people are interested, there is consensus on a date, and a facilitator:

• Select a hashtag for the event. This will be used for the Etherpad and the slug on the wiki page.
• Create an event on https://events.indieweb.org
  • Add the tag "popup" so it will appear in the list of upcoming pop-up events
  • Add the event description and schedule
  • Include a notice that the event will be recorded and archived
  • Include a link to the etherpad for the event using the hashtag, e.g. etherpad.indieweb.org/example-hashtag
• Create a wiki page for the event
  • follow the format YYYY/Pop-ups/example-hashtag
  • The hashtag in the slug should be lowercase. If it's multiple words, use dashes between the words instead of underscores.

Promote the event

• RSVP to the event
• Share the event on your website and/or social platforms

Running the event

Running the Zoom event

• Familiarize yourself with Zoom - Tips for Hosts
  • Screen sharing should be set to "Only Host". The host can share their screen to show people's sites during introductions. You may also be able to designate a co-host to handle screen sharing.
  • Zoom chat is disabled.

Facilitating the event

• When the event is starting (or a few minutes before), post an alert in the main channel of the chat
• Welcome
  • Direct attendees to https://indieweb.org/discuss for chat options
  • Encourage notetaking in the event Etherpad
  • Point out the code of conduct
  • Inform attendees that the event will be recorded and the video archived on archive.org
• Start video recording
• Introductions
  • Introduce yourself and your site, then offer each attendee to introduce themselves.
  • Note: attendee videos don't appear in the same order on everyone's screen, so a host should select the order to avoid confusion.
• Take a group photo
  • Before taking the photo, explain you're taking a screenshot for the event page and the weekly newsletter, allowing people to turn their video on or off as they prefer.
• At the end of the event, share a reminder of other upcoming events

After the event

• Upload the video recording to archive.org
• Upload the photo to the event listing
• Transfer notes from the Etherpad to the wiki page

See Also

• IndieWebCamps/Attendance
• remote participation