Social Events

[Andrew Pinkham]

At the Meetup last Wednesday, we quickly spoke about organizing events at local venues in the evening. Here are a couple ideas:

- Sponsored Happy Hours / Pub Crawl
- Dinner Parties
- Bat Watching
- Duck Boat Tours
- Movie at Alamo Ritz / Paramount

And of course, there's Easy Tiger. :P

One of these ideas should be used for a presenter/organizer dinner.

There are a couple events that we could have at local museums by campus, but these events are a solid 30 minute walk away, and would likely require a bus or van. If anyone in Austin has done anything like that, I'd love to pick your brain.

Any feedback, additions, or reactions appreciated.

Andrew

[Russell Keith-Magee]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for taking the lead on making sure we're all going to have a good time in Austin :-)

One comment to keep in mind - keep an eye on the extent to which alcohol consumption is a key focus of an event. 

There will be underage attendees, there will be attendees with cultural problems with alcohol, and there will be attendees who simply choose not to drink. There's also the issue of social responsibility - when we're trying to improve diversity, an official "lets all get hammered on cheap booze" event doesn't exactly scream "we're making a female-safe event space". 

I'm not saying that we can't have alcohol at events. I just want to make sure that if alcohol *is* involved, we're encouraging consumption in moderation, and that there are either alternatives for those who'd rather not be drinking, or the event is organised in such a way that having a beer is an option, but not a key part of the event. A non-drinker can enjoy watching a retro movie at a licensed theatre; they're not likely to enjoy going on a pub crawl :-)

Yours,

Russ Magee %-)

Andrew

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[Andrew Pinkham]

Hi Russell,
These all sound like perfectly good reasons to veto the happy-hour/pub-crawl idea.

I think the idea was actually to try and get people walking around Austin, and we have a lot of drinking-tourism (or whatever it's actually called).

What do people think instead of a scavenger hunt? We would be able to recommend place to eat, and dishes to try (10 points for eating at Easy Tiger, or 20 points for the BBQ platter at Lambert's) or drinks if we so choose (5 points for a local Texan beer at Craft). We can also get pretty silly: 10 points for a tweeted photo at republic square, or 20 points for a group photo imitation pose in front of Willie's statue at the W.

We could even run it over the course of multiple days. This might help us get local sponsors (as we are providing incentive for individuals to visit specific locations), and might simply be fun. Or really tedious and terrible, if mandatory.

Thoughts?

Andrew

[Russell Keith-Magee]

Agreed that a mandatory scavenger hunt would get tedious pretty quickly. But if it was optional, was reasonably time constrained (e.g., it just runs for one night) and was part of a "getting to know you" style event - small teams of people that don't know each other - it could be a good community building event. Doubly so if we could convince enough of the core team and/or long term community members to spread themselves around. I've always found that one of the best things we can do as leaders in the community is to dispel the idea that we can't be approached, and an afternoon/evening doing touristy stuff sounds like a good way to break that sort of ice.

Russ %-)