Needs

This section comprises factors without which the “village” cannot survive. While many of us would like the self-sufficiency of providing these entirely from within our communities, that is not always possible. Sourcing these needs from municipal governments or unaffiliated businesses is a valid solution. Needs are considered “checked off” (satisfied) if they are reliably accessed by all of the village’s residents. Bullet points in bold are critical, make-or-break needs. Those in normal text are important sub-needs. Entries in italics are notes for discussion rather than needs in and of themselves.

• Shelter
  • Land sufficient for the housing
  • Appropriate permits, etc.
  • Skill – Free carpentry / joinery
  • Skill – Free masonry
  • Tools
  • Equipment
  • Materials and supplies
  • Roof to keep off precipitation and sun
    • Skill – Roofing
    • Equipment – Tools, ladders, etc.
    • Roofing materials and supplies
  • Warmth in winter
    • Skill – HVAC
    • Skill – Fireplace / chimney masonry
      • Skill – Fireplace / woodstove operation
    • Equipment – Heater, woodstove, etc.
    • Tools
    • Heating materials and supplies
    • Energy source
      • How do members of your community power their heating?
        • Biomass – Wood, etc.
        • Fossil fuels – Gas, oil, coal, etc.
        • Alternative energy
  • Cooling in summer
    • Skill – HVAC
    • Skill – Electrician
    • Equipment – Fans, air conditioners, etc.
    • Tools
    • Heating materials and supplies
    • Energy source
      • How do members of your community power their cooling?
        • Biomass – Wood, etc.
        • Fossil fuels – Gas, oil, coal, etc.
        • Alternative energy
  • Security from violence, predators, pests, and theft
  • Sleeping facilities
• Water
  • Potable, clean drinking water
  • Irrigation water for crops, etc.
  • Skill – Plumbing
  • Equipment – Tools, pumps, filters, etc.
  • Pipes and fittings
  • Appropriate storage facilities
• Sanitation
  • Toilet facilities
  • Grooming facilities
  • Bathing facilities
  • Wastewater treatment
    • Sewage quarantining and processing
      • What is your solution?
        • Central sewage processing
          • Skill – Responsible toilet use
        • Septic systems (on-site)
          • Skill – Responsible septic system use
        • Alternative toilets (on-site)
          • Skill – Proper use
    • Greywater processing
      • Are you using greywater for irrigation? If so, how are you educating people about their responsibilities to this system?
  • Pest control
  • Waste disposal
    • Organic waste quarantining and processing
      • Are you composting organic waste? If so, how are you educating people about their responsibilities to this system?
    • Recyclables separation and processing
      • Are you recycling? If so, how are you educating people about their responsibilities to this system?
    • Other waste separation and landfilling
      • Are you doing anything to minimize landfilling? If so, how are you educating people about their responsibilities to this system?
• Food
  • Cooking facilities
    • Equipment
    • Skill – Cooking / Baking
    • Skill – Food safety
  • Food storage facilities
    • See below for variants
    • Skill – Food storage (See below for variants)
    • Skill – Food safety
  • Proteins
    • How do members of your community access complete proteins?
      • Animal meat
        • How are you sourcing it? 
          • Agriculture
            • Skill – Animal husbandry
            • Ranchland sufficient for sustainably grazing herds
            • Equipment
            • Disease control
            • Pest control
            • Winter fodder for herds
            • Water for herds
          • Hunting
            • Skill – Hunting / Trapping
            • Equipment
            • Rangeland sufficient for sustainably supporting wildlife
        • Slaughtering
          • Appropriate facility
          • Equipment
          • Skill – Carcass dressing
        • Butchering
          • Sanitary facility
          • Equipment
          • Skill – Butchering
          • Storage
            • Cold storage
            • Drying/salting/smoking and dry storage
              • Skill – Meat curing / charcuterie
            • Canning and dry storage
              • Skill – Canning
      • Plant sources
        • Farmland sufficient to sustainably grow appropriate crops
        • Seed supplier
        • Skill – Farming / Gardening
        • Irrigation water
        • Planting equipment
        • Weed control
        • Pest control
        • Harvesting equipment
        • Processing equipment
        • Processing facilities
        • Appropriate storage
        • Skill – Plant protein processing
  • Fats
    • How do members of your community access needed fatty acids?
      • Animal meat
        • How are you sourcing it? 
          • Agriculture
            • Skill – Animal husbandry
            • Ranchland sufficient for sustainably grazing herds
            • Equipment
            • Disease control
            • Pest control
            • Winter fodder for herds
            • Water for herds
          • Hunting (Many wild animals are not good sources of fat.)
            • Skill – Hunting / Trapping
            • Equipment
            • Rangeland sufficient for sustainably supporting wildlife
        • Slaughtering
          • Appropriate facility
          • Equipment
          • Skill – Carcass dressing
        • Butchering
          • Sanitary facility
          • Equipment
          • Skill – Fat rendering
          • Cold storage or canning and dry storage
      • Animal dairy
        • Skill – Animal husbandry
        • Ranchland sufficient for sustainably grazing herds
        • Equipment
        • Disease control
        • Pest control
        • Winter fodder for herds
        • Water for herds
        • Sanitary dairy facility
        • Equipment
        • Skill – Milking
        • Skill – Butter making
        • Skill – Cheesemaking
        • Cold storage or canning and dry storage
      • Plant sources
        • Farmland sufficient to sustainably grow appropriate crops
        • Seed supplier
        • Skill – Farming / Gardening
        • Irrigation water
        • Planting equipment
        • Weed control
        • Pest control
        • Harvesting equipment
        • Processing equipment
        • Processing facilities
        • Appropriate oil storage
        • Skill – Oil extraction
  • Carbohydrates
    • How do members of your community access the majority of their caloric needs?
      • Gathering
        • Skill – Foraging
          • Rangeland sufficient for sustainably supporting plant diversity
        • Equipment
      • Agriculture
        • Farmland sufficient to sustainably grow appropriate crops
        • Seed supplier
        • Skill – Farming / Gardening
        • Irrigation water
        • Planting equipment
        • Weed control
        • Pest control
        • Harvesting equipment
    • Processing equipment
    • Processing facilities
    • Appropriate storage
      • Skill – Staple food storage
  • Micronutrients
    • How do members of your community access needed micronutrients, such as from fruits and vegetables?
      • Gathering
        • Skill – Foraging
          • Rangeland sufficient for sustainably supporting plant diversity
      • Agriculture
        • Farmland sufficient to sustainably grow appropriate crops
        • Seed supplier
        • Skill – Farming / Gardening
        • Irrigation water
        • Planting equipment
        • Weed control
        • Pest control
        • Harvesting equipment
    • Processing equipment
    • Processing facilities
    • Appropriate storage
      • Skill – Plant drying
      • Skill – Canning
• Clothing
  • How do your residents clothe themselves?
  • Appropriate equipment
  • Appropriate sourcing
  • Skill – Plant fiber processing
  • Skill – Wool carding and spinning
  • Skill – Weaving
  • Skill – Knitting / crochet
  • Skill – Women’s clothing construction
  • Skill – Men’s clothing construction
  • Skill – Straw plaiting
  • Skill – Feltmaking
  • Skill – Hattery
  • Skill – Leather tanning
  • Skill – Leatherworking
  • Skill – Shoemaking
• Medicine
  • How do your residents access healing?
  • Skill – Allopathic (modern Western) medicine
  • Skill – Traditional Chinese medicine
  • Skill – Ayurvedic medicine
  • Skill – Herbal medicine, Western
• Transportation
  • Transport infrastructure
  • Transport methods
  • Is your village walkable? How can you improve/protect that?
• Power
  • How do residents access the energy needed to do their work, run their housing, etc.?
  • How do they see at night or in the absence of natural light?
• Communications
  • How do residents communicate with each other?
  • How do residents communicate with people outside the village?
  • Is telecommuting important to the jobs of your residents?
  • How vital is Internet access and at what speeds?
• New Members
  • How does your community replace residents who leave, die, etc?
    • Recruitment
    • Children
• Finance
  • What role does money play in your village’s internal economy?
  • How does your village raise enough money to pay for things that it cannot provide for within the village?
  • How does your village pay for taxes on community assets?
  • How do your residents raise enough money to buy things they cannot provide for themselves or barter for within the village?
  • How do your residents pay their taxes?
  • Skill – Accounting
• Security
  • How will your village protect itself from criminals, etc.?

Wants

This section comprises factors that improve the quality of life in the village. While many of us would like the self-sufficiency of providing these entirely from within our communities, that is not always possible. Sourcing these needs from unaffiliated groups is a valid solution. Wants are considered “checked off” (satisfied) if they can be reasonably accessed by the village’s residents. “Reasonable” access will of course vary based on the specifics. Bullet points in bold are categories. Those in normal text are sub-wants. Entries in italics are notes for discussion rather than wants in and of themselves.

• Home furnishings
  • Furniture
    • Skill – Finish carpentry / cabinetmaking
    • Skill – Upholstery
  • Pottery
    • Skill – Pottery
  • Cutlery
    • Skill – Knifemaking
    • Skill – Finesmithing
  • Glassware
    • Skill – Glassmaking
    • Skill – Glassblowing
• Health and beauty aids
  • Soaps / cleaning supplies
    • Skill – Soapmaking
    • Skill – Broom making
    • Skill – Brush making
  • Beauty supplies
    • Skill – Cosmetics making
    • Skill – Perfumery
• Paper goods
  • Skill – Papermaking
• Books
  • Skill – Librarian
  • Skill – Bookbinding
• Metal goods
  • Skill – Smelting / metal recycling
  • Skill – Blacksmithing
  • Skill – Redsmithing
  • Skill – Tinsmithing
  • Skill – Metal fabrication (modern Western)

The post AVOCADO Village Checklist appeared first on Hearthingstone.

An important starting point is to determine a list of requirements and “nice to have” features.

For instance, it would be really awesome if the venue has a working fireplace or firepit that we can use. It’s not really a requirement, though.

When running through some of my early planning thoughts, I said that I wanted to aim for 100-200 attendees and hopefully be able to grow to twice that before needing to find a new site. One of the 2014 PLC organizers encouraged me to think simple first. Not just in terms of venue size, but also programming. I was thinking about three or four sessions at a time, she encouraged me to stick with two.

I’m torn.

On the one hand, this is a distinctly low-budget operation. I might end up collecting cans or something to pay for hotel deposits and the like. Going small to start with should help keep costs down and make all sorts of planning easier. Heck, I’m going to have enough trouble finding good people to run two sets of worthwhile sessions, let alone four!

On the other hand, I get the distinct impression we need to go bigger because of currents and tides outside of our awareness. More programming means more reason for people to attend, and one of the big reasons for Hearthingstone is to build human-to-human networks in support of the Gods’ purposes. But larger venues will cost more and require more of a deposit, so there’s more downside if I can’t get enough people to come.

So, what size does Hearthingstone need? The Quality Inn in Fishkill could seat around 100 in a classroom layout, plus there was a breakfast area that could also seat people. Of course, some events were not “classroom style”, so the seating capacity was significantly reduced in those cases.

Even keeping things simple, I’d still like to be able to accommodate 200 attendees. This gives us some flexibility to have sessions that take up a lot more space than a simple lecture- ceremonies and hands-on workshops, for instance.

Here’s a rough map of the areas that have hotels in Austin. Obviously, there are some hotels outside of these spots.

The green areas have hotels that might work. The red ones I’m excluding because of things like high crime, too little meeting space overall, or because the area gives me a headache.

There are some moderately-sized convention hotels outside of downtown (the most expensive area) that might work, but then again they might be too big. Many convention hotels will offer discounted (or free) meeting rooms if attendees book enough “room nights” at the hotel. The question being “how many is that?” Will Hearthingstone be able to draw enough of a crowd to “comp” the meeting rooms?

In another post, I talked about the need to connect the venue via public transit (or shuttle) to the places people will be arriving- the airport, etc. Obviously, this is easier downtown and becomes harder the further out we go. In considering more downtown versus away from downtown, there are several trade-offs:

• Closer to downtown generally has better transit service.
• Further from downtown is generally cheaper.
• Further from downtown is generally less noisy and crowded, though not necessarily. Many other venues are either near the airport or a major highway.
• Closer to downtown often has a wider variety of services within walking distance, though again not necessarily.
• Ironically, downtown venues often have more access to greenspace because of parks along the river (“lake”).
• Downtown venues typically have the least parking and they often charge for it, while venues further out tend to have plenty of free parking.
• More of the venues downtown have meeting space large enough, whereas many of the further out hotels are simply motels and have little or no meeting space.

Personally, I have a soft spot for La Quinta because of their remarkably tolerant pet policy. We stayed almost entirely in LQs while moving halfway across the country with three cats. A cat breeder I know tends to stay in them for the same reason when traveling to shows. They also tend to be reasonably priced.

Unfortunately, few of them have meeting rooms larger than a boardroom. For instance, one that I stayed in last year (during apartment renovations) has only 2 meeting rooms and the largest seats only 35 people, classroom-style. The largest LQ meeting facility in town tops out at about 105 people. That might be enough, but it’s also the most expensive LQ in town ($175/night)- about twice the cost per night of the cheapest.

Speaking of pets, this raises another important point. Some attendees may be required to travel with animals- service companions and/or animals who work with them spiritually. While most hotels are pretty good about service animals, many are downright draconian regarding “pets”.

Another consideration is food and alcohol. Many of the more conference-focused venues will have their own catering service and possibly even an alcohol license. As I talked about in another post, we might need to provide food and (soft) drink for attendees, which becomes unmanageably expensive if catering is involved. As far as alcohol, if the venue has a license, we get into questions of “corkage” fees and/or waivers if any of our events involve open containers of alcohol- even offerings.

That’s probably enough ruminating about hotels and locations for one evening.

-In Deos Confidimus

The post Venue Considerations appeared first on Hearthingstone.

Obviously, programming is a huge concern. I touched on this in another post, but just knowing how many of what kinds of sessions you want to provide is just the beginning. Here are some example questions that need answering:

• How will we locate good people to run those sessions?
• How will we fill sessions for which we are having trouble locating people?
• Will speakers, facilitators, etc. receive free or discounted admission, and if so, by how much and for how many sessions?
• Will we pay travel expenses for some of those people? Who and why?
• How do we determine what sessions go into what event spaces?

Obviously, there are a lot more questions, but those are some of the highlights.

Another issue to consider is vendors. It is not unusual for conferences to have vendors, who may or may not pay for the space they occupy. While Hearthingstone is primarily a conference about religious issues, many traditions do not separate commercial activities from the sacred. Furthermore, a large number of polytheist leaders support themselves or substantially supplement meager incomes through vending.

However, offering a dedicated vendor space with rented tables presents liability concerns, such as the provision of security and the need to carry additional insurance. I know of some conventions that fell down in this regard, and it was not pretty.

Speaking of meager incomes, it is not unusual for conventions to have a hospitality suite that provides light refreshments to any attendee free of charge. Based on past experience, we should expect that at least a few attendees will be in need of more substantial food. While Austin has ample supermarkets and restaurants, some of them operating 24 hours a day, not every attendee will have the means to make use of them. Hearthingstone will probably need to find a way to supplement these folks’ food supply.

In addition to food, many of our traditions involve the offering of alcohol, tobacco, and the like. Because Texas is a “blue law” state, we will need to make sure that attendees are made aware of the location and closing times of nearby sources, as well as legal limitations such as areas where smoking is prohibited.

One of the important ways of communicating this, and other important information is the convention program book. There are a great many questions to answer around this publication.

For instance- what paper size do we print it on? Smaller books are more portable and easier to lose, while larger books are easier to read but less easy to carry around and are generally more expensive.  Just a quick glance at Office Depot’s website tells me that even a spartan 12-page book will cost between $1.60 and $2.30 per copy for a black-and-white book.

Since Hearthingstone is partly about networking, it might make sense to print a small contact blurb for each pre-registered attendee (unless they opt out). Even at a minimal size, that’s potentially 5 or so extra pages for 100 people, more if we include space for a small picture. We could put these online instead, but building a way to show it only to registered attendees could be tricky. Do we put the book online?

Speaking of opting out, while many Hearthingstone attendees are public representatives of their traditions and/or communities, we can’t forget that some may still have very good reasons to keep their names and faces separate from their faith. We will need a way of balancing the educational benefits of recording sessions and sharing them afterward with the need to allow some folks to opt out of appearing in public. The same applies to any press releases or other media attention we eventually decide is appropriate for the conference- how do we raise the profile of polytheisms generally while protecting attendees whose identities need to remain private?

Lots to think about…

-In Deos Confidimus

The post Some Practical Considerations appeared first on Hearthingstone.

At the same time, if I can pull this off at all, it will be on a shoestring budget. I can’t afford to be hopping a jet every week to check out hotels and such. At least for now, any conference I’m organizing will need to be pretty much in my backyard. It’s possible that San Antonio, Houston, or even DFW would be a bit cheaper, but my research thus far doesn’t suggest that it’s enough to make it worth my time to make those drives frequently. Plus, none of those cities has a strong reputation for tolerating differences- Austin does.

This is important in a number of ways. For instance, many shamans, spiritworkers, and mystics possess a gender identity that is not recognized by a substantial portion of the US population. Many Austin businesses (though certainly not all) offer non-gendered restrooms and/or try hard to be conscientious of gender identity.

Furthermore, many of these leaders are also subject to significant restrictions regarding diet, dress, and the like. Others carry physical scars and ailments that require special accommodation to prevent extreme discomfort and suffering. Holding the conference in a major city makes it easier to find the goods and services (and service providers) necessary to ease this burden.

For instance, I can easily source vegan, gluten-free, organic, and/or humanely-pastured food from several different vendors. Austin might be Whole Foods’ headquarters city, but we have lots of other places, large and small.

I am fully confident that this city can comfortably support a polytheist leadership conference.

Of course, being in Texas, the season is important. March is a beautiful time of year, weather-wise, but that’s when SXSW happens… good luck booking a flight or a hotel during that! March is also during the school year, and many members of our target audience are academics- teachers, professors, graduate students, and such.

For that reason, the 2014 PLC was held in July- a perfectly reasonable time to visit New York state. Austin, however, topped out around 104°F (40°C) today. Sure, there’s a hemisphere-wide heat wave going on right now, but temperatures in the high 90s are not unusual here in summer, or late spring and autumn for that matter.

While most of the conference will be indoors (though it would be nice to have some outdoor events), we have to consider the possibility that some attendees will want to sleep outdoors or in their vehicles either because of religious strictures or to save money. This is not unprecedented, so I need to take it into consideration.

Another important transportation-related consideration is vehicle access and mass transit.

Being in Texas, many venues have plenty of parking. If you’re not sure what I mean by this state’s love of the automobile, I encourage you to visit the Buc-ee’s convenience store in New Braunfels, about 45 minutes south of Austin.

On the other hand, no city in Texas has particularly great public transit. Austin’s is improving, but I will need to plan carefully around the available bus routes to make sure that non-driving guests can get from the airport, Amtrak, and Greyhound stations to the conference venue.

-In Deos Confidimus

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