The ideal HU Travellers Meeting location:
Ideally, you want to have everything in one place, so that participants can arrive, set up their tent, talk to people, wander over to the bar for a drink or a snack, look at bikes, then walk to dinner or a barbecue and then to slide shows no more than a few hundred meters, and back to the campsite afterwards for a chat around the campfire. If they don't want to ride all weekend they don't have to, or can go for rides whenever they like. Those hotelling know where everyone is, and can arrive early inthe morning and hang out, and not have to go looking for people.
The campsite
Ideally, it should be our venue exclusively, no one else. If not possible, it's important to have a separate area designated for our people, and as far away from other campers as possible. Either we'll annoy them late at night or they'll annoy us by getting up way too early in the morning!
Slide shows, presentations etc.
The evenings should be no longer than about 4 hours, with lots of breaks.
Saturday afternoon session(s) should be over about one to two hours before dinner, leaving people time for a chat after, questions, and time to get organised for the evening.
Individual slide shows should be no longer than 45 minutes, plus a few minutes for questions, then tell them it's going to be a 10 minute break and plan on 15 minimum.
At the beginning of each evening, perhaps 30-60 minutes or so for people to jump up (half the Friday evening and half Saturday) and give a 30 second talk on who they are and their travel experience, why they came, places and bikes they like etc. Never done it, would be interested to see how it works! Will only work with a small meeting of course.
Breakout sessions:
Put up (and announce they're there!) sheets of paper that anyone can write on and say:
Breakout session on "Crossing the Sahara" table 6 at dinner - 8 people max - sign up here
Breakout session on "Airhead gearboxes" table 4 at lunch - 10 people max - sign up here
Word Template for the signup sheets for the breakout sessions here.
Presentation tips links:
Some very good tips: http://www.matscieng.sunysb.edu/presentations1/Presentations_01.html and
http://www.kevinboone.com/pgche/howto-presentation.html
and finally on giving a 3 hour course, the excellent:
http://perl.plover.com/yak/presentation/
Afternoon sessions
Tech sessions, prepping a bike, pannier selection etc, travel seminars on a particular area by an expert on it, trip preparation, "top 3 best modifications/ equipment to have," and anything else you can think of or have experts to lead.
Raffle to support a motorcycle related charity
We usually support Riders for Health, an excellent motorcycle related charity supplying motorcycles to doctors and nurses in remote parts of Africa.
Visit local dealers, restaurants, tourist venues etc to get giveaways for the raffle. Small items like t-shirts, discounts off a meal etc. DON'T get carried away - no big deal or massive effort, just a few goodies would be nice but not critical.
We will supply t-shirts, and possibly a few CafePress HU logo items for the raffle.
If you have any comments, or additions we'd greatly appreciate your feedback!
Thanks for your interest and support,
Grant and Susan
Horizons Unlimited
