Co-Hosting Meet-ups (Enhancing Collective responsibility)

[#1]

Hello Community, 

Can we have an arrangement where there are more than one Local Guide registered as the host to a meet-up?
Sometimes, two or more Local Guides come together and plan for a meet-up, and only one Local Guide can register as the host of the event. I think it's worth  considering.  A few times Local Guides have asked for help in planning and successfully getting a meet-up approved, sometimes they're successful other times they're not. Some Local Guides know how to present a meet-up request for approval better than some others, if there was a system where all planners and promoters of a meet-up could be credited as hosts, it would be encouraging on so many levels. It would also be a way of acknowledging the contributions of other Local Guides to hosting the meet-up, even if they were distant. The system will invariably improve the effort made towards each meet-up as more than one person can take direct responsibility for the success of the meet-up

Cheers. 

[Austinelewex]

1. Very nice idea @Anonymous
2. Looking forward to it being implemented.

[IrrPavlova]

Thank you for sharing your idea, @Anonymous. We are going to need some more details to make sure we are on the same page. Could you give some examples of cases and topics of meet-ups where this would be a useful decision.

[Anonymous]

Thank you @Austinelewex for the support. 

@IrrPavlova. Here are a few cases and scenarios where this can be useful. 

Case 1: Division of Labour
             A meet-up is approved. The host is a typical Local Guide, she's got work to do, meanwhile the logistics are not yet all in place, the venue hasn't even been checked out and pre-booked ahead of time, or tested for viability for the meet-up type. people just RSVP thinking all the planning and logistics have been planned to the milli-second meanwhile, nothing has been done in that regard. A day to the meet-up, she scrambles a few things for D-Day and hopes for the best. Many people host meet-up's only to get swarmed by other things they couldn't have seen coming, perhaps an intended day off wasn't got afterall and they'd have to cancel. Or they're so busy that they forgot to plan for an important part of the meet-up. 
         These issues can be mitigated by making it possible for people to take into account, the fact that they may not be sufficient to do all the planning. With a Co-hosting feature, the host and the co-host(s) know the details of the planned meet-up and so won't just sit back like everyother attendee, but will keep each other on their toes, they may choose to delegate the different responsibilities to reduce the workload on any one person. In cases where one host is unable to attend, the meet-up isn't cancelled, the remaining host(s) see's the meet-up through. 

Case 2: Publicty and reach
            Often, a meet-up is approved and the publicity the meet-up recieves is limited to the connect post, and a few re-shares by the host if any. Given that the idea of email meet-up alerts hasn't been implemented, the reach and coverage of any hosted meet-up is limited. Most attendees who RSVP don't go further to share the news or invite other Local Guides, believing that the Host has got that covered, but the host is just one person and there is only so much one person can do. 
          If however, there were more than one host, the direct responsibility for publicity and making sure the meet-up is a success becomes spread, thus with more than one person at the head of a meet-up, there are more chances of having more people getting the news of the meet-up. Low turnout during Local Guides organised meet-up is a general issue which everyone would like to see addressed, there's no doubt that publicity has a role to play in this, and this might just be a step towards solving that problem. 

Case 3: The newbie effect
            Did you know that Local Guides have more meet-up ideas than are currently known? And this is just from what I know of in Nigeria, many of these Local Guides just have the idea and won't eventually go ahead to initaite the meet-up for approvals and implementation. There are so many reason why this could happen, so many of them haven't used this platform before, sometimes they don't know how, sometimes they just need a little push to get things going. But when they share these ideas with other Local Guides, a good push in the right direction can be for the Local Guide who's prepared to host the meet-up, to go ahead and host the meet-up and list the ideator as a co-host. A lot of meet-up ideas pass through our unofficial communities, and they never get implemented, by the ideator, but with the Co-hosting feature, any Local Guide can co-host with the Ideator to bring the meet-up to life. 

Case 4: An incentive to host 
            Hosting a meet-up can be like hosting a casual event for friends and family, it seems like no big deal, but it can become a big deal, I sometimes get panicky when I feel something isn't going as planned, and that can be a real detterent. Imagine suggesting to someone who is a perfectionist to host a meet-up, they're going to run through a list of things that could go wrong. It's not just the perfectionists, most people don't like to be thrown out there alone, they'd be more comfortable with a group. So if there were a Co-hosting framework, people would be more inclined to say lets do this geo-walk together. 

The list is longer than this, but perhaps, this summarises the point.

[Chizbeth]

Great idea @Anonymous Co-hosted meetups will be a great way to get more local guides to actively participate in the community!

[IrrPavlova]

Thank you for the detailed clarification, @Anonymous. Your idea is open for voting now and other Local Guides are free to show some support.

[Sayo]

@Anonymous Great idea. It will be one way of getting more and more local guides involved. I have come to realise that many of us tend to have similar meet-up ideas and you then have the same theme running through different meet-ups hosted by different local guides. This way, we would then be harnessing the power of many to bring more quality to meet-ups. Another perspective to this idea is that it could be used to encourage new local guides to host their own "independent" meet-up after co-hosting a meet-up with a seemingly more experienced local guide. All in all, it will be a win-win for everyone.

Looking forward to this feature been implemented.

[Anonymous]

Thank you @IrrPavlova. 

@Sayo Many thanks for the input. 

[Raphael-Mahumane]

Very good idea @Anonymous, I like the idea, but the most important part for me is the notification part in a form of email message either for the local fellow local guides or for those who did the RSVP.  

We need an internal platform that enable local guides to get email notification in case a meet-up has been approved for local or nearest city. This will help to let everyone know about the event and start preparing for it and also communicate with the host to plan for it and clarify other issues internally on connect or separately within the organised meet-up.

[TsekoV]

Hello @Anonymous,

We would like to thank you for your ideas, but we did not manage to implement it in time and according to our Idea Exchange policies we are going to need to close your idea.