[hackerspaces] tips&tricks for successful hacker tour

[Frantisek Apfelbeck]

Hi to all,
I and my girlfriend representing Food Hacking Base (fhb) and Dancing 
Drops (dd) (associated group of fhb) are planning food&beverage 
hacking tour around Europe starting at 30c3 in Hamburg, lasting for 
around 6 weeks, at least two people involved full time with preparations and on the road. We will be using 
hackerbus (thanks to Moritz for lending it to us) and we would like to 
hear some tips&tricks on the subject to do it cool and end up in 
surplus at the end. We need to cover at least our costs of +-€3500, 
preferably ending around €5000 in donations or over to get some profit. Many thanks for any info, we will share it back!

Our main goal on this tour is to promote the food&beverage hacking in the hacker 
movement, strengthening the connections/social networks within the 
hacker community and collecting funds for future activities of both 
groups dedicated to these fields.

Here is our plan and thinking please comment!:

Starting the tour and it's program
We want to start the tour at the 30c3 in Hamburg (end of December) or just after that and tour the West, maybe South and definitely central Europe promoting food&beverage hacking, especially fermentations giving 
workshops, organizing thematic dinners, helping up to build up and 
improve relevant facilities (kitchen&brewing corners, bio-labs) in 
the given hackerspaces, including the promotion of the experimental 
incubator project building up the prototypes. We were considering 2-3 
days per hackerspace, arriving on day 0 in the afternoon or evening, 
making workshop on brewing next day (day 1), improving the place with 
the members and doing variety of "non scheduled " activities on day two, organizing community dinner on day three and hitting the road on day 
four. That is the time plan more or less, it will differ based on the 
hackerspace I guess. At the moment one or two days break between the 
hackerspaces seems feasible, day 0 is part of this break.

Communication, coordination and selection where to go
We plan to get in touch with hackerspaces which we know the people from 
and let the people who we do not know to get in touch with us once we 
officially "announce the tour", which is not the case yet. Based on that we will make a list of bit over 10 hackerspaces which we want to visit 
and coordinate the timing with them. We would like to have at least one 
contact person in each place whose help we need to both coordinate and 
promote our activities there and help us with visiting and getting in 
touch with interesting places in the region. I also plan to be on the 
hackerspace mailing list of that group at least temporarily.

Resources sharing
We want to raise/collect the resources (money) by crowdsourcing campaign 
and direct donations at the place. We will have some "gift stuff" like 
matelade jars, logos, thematic postcards etc. The money collected will 
be split between food Hacking Base group, Dancing Drops and the 
hackerspaces (ratio has to be discussed) which we visit - we want to 
support  the places and related activities there. We are thinking about 
sharing around 30% of profit from direct donations with the hackerspaces where we collect the resources, not sure about exact number yet, 
depends probably on the place.

Sleeping and transport
We hope to couch surf with the people from the communities and use the 
microbus which we will be touring in as a last resort sleeping solution. The transport is the microbus as mentioned above, we are considering 
getting trailer so we can carry more stuff in it having enough place in 
the car by itself especially for sleeping.

Multimedia equipment and ingredients, stuff
We will have a digital camera, laptop (or netbook), hopefully printer and 
mobile phone (not sure what solution to choose here at all - we will 
visit many countries and I do not like mobiles), the last especially 
because of GPS. Concerning ingredients and equipment we will be caring 
quite a decent amount of both with us, so we should be self sufficient 
as much as possible.

Posting and updating info about our campaign
Well it looks like that Food Hacking Base (fhb) discuss will be used for 
email updates, Facebook account for both groups and Twitter for fhb 
again. We will also write limited amount of blog posts. The manuals and 
info will be on the wiki, possibly completely on fhb wiki. There will be continuous crowdsourcing campaign too. Any other ideas how to promote?
Really wondering about
Did any of you run crowdsourcing campaign during a major hacker event? How 
was it? To do this part well is I believe highly important in the means 
of positive financial outcome, do you agree? Any projections?

What did we forgot
Well I wonder, ideas?

Many thanks for any info on the topic, there are many of you who has similar experience please share it. I've been doing some touring already before but never for example with a car. We are more likely to spend around 
€3500 for the whole trip (flying from South Korea and back taking most 
of it, plus gasoline), and that is the minimum which we would like to 
get back = cover our costs, anything extra would be highly appreciated, 
the aim may be around €5000 so around €1500 profit is possible. Does it 
sounds doable for cca 6 weeks hacker tour?

Sincerely from Jeju, South Korea,

Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck


biotechnologist&kvasir and hacker


http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org


"There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
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