LOL, 6 months have elapsed since inception of the global meetup idea and the location STILL is being debated?
Yeah sure, like this is gonna take place alright. :D
I predict at least another 6 months of location post dithering, interspersed with several months here and there where the thread falls off the main page and folks forget about it.
My prediction: location is finalized in March 2008.
Then another 6-9 months will elapse before someone gets around to researching the best lodging available and posts the alternatives so BLers will at least be able to book non-randomly at several locations and be somewhat grouped together.
Prediction: lodging alternatives posted January 2009.
This will be followed by 3 months of a slew of "FUUUUUCK YEAH I'M DOWN LIKE A MUTHAFUCKIN GOOSE!" posts, followed a month thereafter by a roughly equivalent slew of "Things are lookin iffy but Ima try to make it" posts, then another 2-3 weeks of "Damn guys my fundage sucks, I'm out
" posts.
Prediction: 19 BLers confirm trip reservations in May 2009. An additional 9 cancel at last minute when they realize their mates aren't going/someone they dislike IS going.
By any usual BL meetup standard though, Operation BL Pipe Dream has been a success.
If you folks are REALLY serious, has a committee been appointed to select a location/sort out the details?
I'd suggest appointing a committee of, like, 5 BLers. One of them would be selected to act as committee chair, responsible for coordinating all the information deadlines and committee decision e-powwows, browbeating the committee members to make sure they meet their information deadlines and then posting the decisions made for the BL community.
The other 4 each take one of the proposed meetup locations and research what events are going on during that time and what accomodations are most convenient/affordable. The 4 then present their research findings and the committee votes on the 4 alternatives, with potential sites being eliminated until a clear majority favorite is reached.
Alternatively, the committee could vote on the site at the outset, then divvy up the research responsibilities among the 4 after selection. This would result in less research work for the committee members, but the downside is the decision is made without the benefit of all of the best available information.
Once the site is selected, the committee members then divvy up research responsibilities for preparing a very general outline of events and transportation/food/lodging options at the site itself, so the BLers planning to come will not be hitting the ground completely clueless and will have a rough guide to use in coordinating with other BLers attending.
There are a fuckton of logistical considerations that ought to be covered...for instance:
1) Where is the nearest US (and other) diplomatic office in case of emergency or arrest?
2) Where can money exchange sites be located?
3) Will your cellphone be usable at the location? Maybe, maybe not. What is best SIM card deal there? Is your charger compatible with local outlets?
4) 30+ BLers arriving without supplies (travelling internationally with supplies is sheer idiocy) will need supply lines that *hopefully* minimize shadiness...are there any local BLers knowledgeable as to reliable supply liaisons?
5) What is best available local transit for large groups?
A good carrot on the stick for these committee members doing a solid planning job would be for all those attending to pitch in and cover, say, one night's lodging at $100 per diem, for each of them. This in turn would also (hopefully) obligate the committee to take their jobs seriously. If 50 BLers ended up attending, that would amount to an additional $10 expenditure for each of them...well worth it imo if many of the trip logistics have been smoothed out for them in advance.
Another thought is this...you could arrange lodging locations sort of like BL Olympic villages, with each major group (US, Europe, Aus/Asia) having its own village lodging area near each other. You could even have each village sponsor a different night of activities, serving as "host" for those activities with an emphasis on BLer flavor from that group. BLers are going to congregate most with those from their own places of origin, at least initially, so why not use that fact to the advantage of the event?
There's also a practical reason for this...centralizing 40+ BLers in one location tends to draw heightened attention to the group, as the larger the group, the greater the tendency to act carelessly because of the mob mindset. A little bit of decentralization would offset the conspicuousness. Of course, none of this applies if you have it, say, in Ibiza.
If you wanted to get
really ambitious, you could print out t-shirts with something like "BL Internationale June 2009" (or more appropriately "BL Special Olympics", imo) with some kind of symbol from each major group, similar to the Olympic rings.
But that's probably a bit too ambitious when you get right down to it...I've been known to engage in overly ambitious ideas for meetups that ultimately never came to fruition a time or two in the past.
All these musings are largely academic on my part because I'm getting too old for this stuff and in all likelihood wouldn't be in attendance, but the "If you build it, they will come" adage applies here. People are much more likely to take an idea seriously and invest in it if they have a concrete plan placed before them, plus they're also that much more likely to come if some of the logistical hurdles are already smoothed out for them.
Imo you'd almost certainly have a better turnout that way...without a concrete plan, it pretty much stays in the pipe dream category.
