[Battlemesh] Summary of the futuristic meeting

Nefeli Kousi nefeli.kousi at gmail.com
Fri Jun 9 12:39:37 UTC 2017


Hello everyone,

As announced, we had a meeting today regarding the organisation of the next
Battlemeshes. I will sum up the open discution we had today in this email
to the best of my ability. More detailed notes can be found in the
etherpad: https://etherpad.funkfeuer.at/p/wbm-future.


*Subjects discussed:*

*- Who is stepping up as mentors?*
We talked about the mentor's role in the event. The role is very useful for
guaranteeing the event happening and helps the local team feel supported
and not get lost.
*Outcomes:*
The organisers of the current year should participate in mentoring the next
year and stick around for an extra one in order to ensure continuity.
Mentoring team that stretches over the 3 previous years, eg for WBM11,
mentorship team is from 8, 9 & 10.
In every event there should be a meeting like the one we had today in order
to ensure that there will be mentors for the next one.
Paul, Claudio and Philippe have volunteered to be mentors for this year
(thank you! give an applause from home too.).

*-Do we need a recon team?*
We discussed the role, value and necessity of having a recon team.
*Outcomes:*
A recon team can benefit the event greatly in keeping things organised
since their presence will force deadlines and show commitment from the
community.
It is a costly role both on money and time perspective.
It could be taken over by each years team for the next current year's team
in the 3 year fashion mentioned above.
It is possible to try and fund the travel costs of the recon team using a
yearly budget (i.e. 1000 eur/year).

*- Formalising BattleMesh?*
The idea came to make an association for Battlemesh specifically. Or to
attach to ISOC or an other big organisation to lower the organising load.
*Outcomes:*
It can be beneficial for sponsors yet we have already managed to cover most
of the benefits that the association would give us via existing ones.

*- Are we changing the name to something without "battle" in the name?*
The discussion is familiar to many. "Battlemesh" can be misrepresenting the
event and create wrong expectations (e.g. a winner or lengthy flamewars
taking place) that confuse people. It was also reported that the first
phrase of the WBM website can be altered to better represent the format of
the event.
*Outcomes:*
Even though there is some friendly competition between the different teams
the community is friendly and collaborative.
An email will be sent with further information and proposal of names.

*- Are we changing the format for the next events?*
Many interesting ideas came up on this subject. Adding workshops in order
to speed the learning curve of new people, try and unload the duties of the
organisers via offering a "bare minimum" list of items and maybe some
pre-backed items (e.g. logo) that they can use.
It was noted that supporting newcomers is valuable for the community to
continue to exist in the future.
*Outcomes:*
Balancing open time (un-conference) with structured time worked well for
this edition and it might serve us well in the future.
Booking accommodation is up to the local team and not mandatory.

*- Focus for the next events (experiments, talks, social events?)*
There were suggestions about workshops (e.g firmware building 101) as well
as moving to remote locations.

*- Duration of the event?*
This is to be decided by each organising team.

*- Do we want to reach out to Academia/Universities?*
We already try to reach the local academia in each event. It was discussed
that trying to involve more academics would mean focusing on (well-written)
results.

Cheers,
Nefeli
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