Tues: hax festival first organizer meeting and call for speakers

[Mark Jenkins]

Hi folks,

It's time to organize our 6th Hax festival. The idea of Hax is to
celebrate the hackerspace and hackerdom all in one weekend. Every good
organization should have a big annual event, and this has become ours!

Great events require great organizing.

Our first organizer meeting will be tomorrow, Tuesday January 14,
6:30pm, at the space. You can also join in by video conference
https://meet.google.com/wem-aqgh-rdn

Sorry for the late notice.

An agenda for the meeting:
1. Setting a meeting agenda

2. Governance: festival co-chairs vs chair + sub-committee chairs

3. Fiscal responsibility

4. Licensed dance party relative timing, Options include "the" Friday,
"the" Saturday, a prequel/prequel-fundraiser weeks in advance abd
other ideas. (see more on this below)

5. Setting weekend festival date and any prequel date

6. Sub-committees: talks, dance party, chill, movie-night, sponsors?,
flea market?

7. Future meeting schedule

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Speaking of talks, here's my first call for speakers:

The Skullspace Hax festival is seeking talks of interest to a broad
hackerspace community. Preferred length, 15 to 45 minutes inclusive of
Q&A. We are particularly interested in new voices, but also welcome
long time members and associates to pad out the schedule.

If you don't have a talk to offer, please refer us to people you know.

Honouria may be offered on request.

Talks are organized by Mark Jenkins email: mark AT parit DOT ca.

Talks will be delivered on a Saturday morning/afternoon, likely in
May. Exact date to be announced soon. Options are available to deliver
a talk
* remotely
* time shifted
and/or
* anonymously

We regret that our space is not mobility accessible.

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Here's a primer on the topic of licensed dance party timing,

Last year we tried something new, a "beta"/"prequel" party weeks in
advance of the main festival weekend. On the main weekend, our primary
party was on a Friday night on the theory that this is when attendees
have the most paycheque money and party energy on hand.

My opinion, I didn't really like having a big late Friday event on the
main weekend. There are a limited number of engaged skullspace member
volunteers for Skullspace events.

If many of these folks are helping to supervise and enjoy a late
Friday night, they can't be available on Saturday morning and
afternoon to be a chill, "hackerspace in action" open house crew that
visitors can interact with when not taking in talks.

For me, the Saturday day time is the core of the festival and the
heart of why I founded it. For me, the talks, the chance to have chill
daytime interactions with hackerspace community members, and maybe
even some back of the space workshops most embodies the original
Skullspace slogan of "knowledge. community. technology.".

We don't have as much of that kind of organized daytime activity
anymore like we had in our early years. For me, the festival Saturday
daytime is our *one* day a year to keep that O.G. spirit of our space
alive. Putting all the traditional hacker brainyness in one day allows
for a network effect where different people with different interests
can run across each other.

To be at its best, we need our best people available at that time.

There are many options to balance out the daytime and party vibes.
Here are the ideas I can think of:

---
1. Do the same thing as last year, but do it better, perhaps by
rallying enough distinct Friday / Saturday volunteers to cover both
needs. Variation 1b) of this, don't do the prequel, just do the main
event.

---

Option 2. Go back to the original Hax festival model, be nerds on
Saturday daytime, follow that up with a brain busting late Saturday
night celebration party. If Saturday is a less viable day for getting
party customers through the door, we just have to scale our alcohol
inventory order, amenities, security costs and capacity limits to fit
lower expectations for a Saturday night and not be overly ambitious.

Variation on 2, say 2b) is to focus a Hax festival Saturday night on
newer, less established DJs who are first and foremost looking for a
performance opportunity and to support our hackerspace.

An emphasis on new people is similar to the spirit of what our
Saturday talks are about.

Whereas for more established DJs we should be offering a guaranteed
payment to book, for an evening focussed on less established folks we
could have a net revenue share model.

I know that people like to get paid right away, and I could support
that by being sober and present throughout a late Saturday night and
having a solid spreadsheet model in place to carefully calculate
profitability (taking all costs and padding into consideration). With
that in place, I could float instant cash payouts to performers and
I'd make my claims against balances in Square etc in the days after.


A new option:

3. Don't throw a big late night party on the main festival weekend at all.

Instead, have the big, late night weeks in advance. One way to frame
it would be as a festival fundraiser. The "prequel-fundraiser". If
said event results in a financial windfall, that goes towards
enhancing the main weekend. Proceeds could be used to cover some of
our main weekend talks/workshops honouria fund and also support an
early Saturday night artistic showcase / reception, which could
include musical performances (synth/DJ) etc that are not going to
drive traffic through the door but help advance the state of the art.

A more chill artistic showcase on the main weekend doesn't even have
to be a licensed event with license and insurance costs. Can simply be
dry, early and a lot less of a worry when we have a whole weekend to
fill with hackerspace fun.

---

There are probably other approaches entirely. No options are off the table.


Mark Jenkins
Hax Festival Founder