[foodhackingbase] My thoughts on the FHB at OHM2013

[Lurwah]

Hi!

Here are some of my thoughts on the FHB at OHM2013 and perhaps future
events:

It was cool! Nice to have a place of like-minded people all with an
interest in food, yet so diverse.

The hexayurt cold room unfortunately wasn't that big of a success in my
opinion, especially taking into account the amount of time and money that
went into it. For me the lesson that can be learned here: don't take on
projects for events, unless you >know for certain< you have the expertise
on board to finish it. Of course you can then still fail. In this case we
didn't even fail, it was a matter of hoping someone showed up. That didn't
happen, so the cold room never really got cold.

The workshop room: Next time let's invest in a rented tent for this as
well. Perhaps even just one big one for kitchen and workshops. Also I would
prefer standing desks in such a place, ones like in the kitchen at OHM, for
example. This way we can invest more time in preparing projects and need
less time for build up. It also saves a lot on left over materials at the
end.

The major thing for me: I felt the Food Hacking Base was more of a
community kitchen than a proper food hacking base for most of the time. At
one time I was preparing for my workshop with a friend, we were asked
several times when "we'd be done". In other words, our food hacking was in
the way of people wanting to cook a meal. I also got the impression the
same happened to the guys preparing for molecular cooking. Now I'm not
saying we have to stop either the community kitchen or the food hacking
base, but it might be worth considering dividing them. Divided physically
on the event and in the organisation. The way forward as I see it:
-One (or more) community kitchen(s): The cooking equipment you need to cook
for 20-30 people, no staff, maybe just one person to keep an eye on
donations and shopping, and of course people for build-up. Anybody is free
to use the kitchen, they are encouraged to cook for more people than
themselves.
-A Food Hacking Base / Bio-lab: brewing, molecular cooking, (safe)
chemical/bio experiments. A place purely for working on food/bio related
projects. If the end result is edible, awesome!, but the main objective is
not cooking meals, but hacking and working together.

For the next event we'd have to poll if people want to keep the FHB as it
was on OHM, or if they'd like this, or a, change. If we choose change, then
for both bases we still need enough people to volunteer. My interest lies
in a FHB as in the second suggestion. Please let us know what you think. Is
it worth further discussion?


Yours,
Lurwah

One last thing: I understood the FHB has left a >lot< of trash and stuff
for orga to clean up. This definitely shouldn't happen next event, they
have enough to do. So if you plan to bring something, also plan to take it
away.
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