Events "How To" Guide
The CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.
The Events "How To" Guide provides some instructions on how to set up meetings and events in the CouchSurfing Events page.
So... you want to get some CouchSurfers together? Here the basics of how to set up your event and communicate with other CouchSurfers.
Contents |
Ideas for Events
Food: - BBQ - Pic-nic - Pot Luck - Cake club / Kitchen Party - The Food War
Sport: - Ultimate Frisbee - Salsa dancing - Critical Mass bike ride - Mafia game - Capture the Flag game - Tricycle racing - Hiking - Indoor rock-climbing - Mass pillow fight
Travel: - Road trip - Hitch-hiking - Invasions - Camping trip
Alcoholic: - Pub - Bar - Wine-tasting - House party - Pub crawl (themed?)
Non-alcoholic: - Concert/gig - Film - Museum - Castle - Sightseeing - Speed-friending - Café - Restaurant - Park - Hookah/Shisha soirée - Beach - CS Bingo - 20 Questions game - Rubiks Cube party - Board Games evening - Swapshop - Language themed event - Street festivals - Markets - Free comedy evenings - Assassins game - Free Hugs - Silent Disco - Flash mob - Zombie Walk - Quiz night - Teach/learn a specific ‘skill’ (Cooking, ...) - Photography - Dumpster diving - Brides of March - Newbies meet-up & welcome - Mask-making - Urban Speleology
Sending out invitations .... other things to know about the Events tool
It has the capacity to send invitations to a group of members based on your previous CouchSearch! results and or to members of groups that are geographically or thematically relevant to your event. For instance, if the event is an invitation to a football match in Barcelona, you may want to search CS for a Barcelona Football group. There would be no point sending it to a Barcelona's Food Lovers group! It's recommended that you join the groups that fit your profile as members of "My Groups" so that they can be included in your invitation options.
These invitations are moderated by the event invitation approval group and require time to be approved so don't plan an event for tomorrow and expect your invitations to get there in time. The purpose of this moderation is to weed out messages that violate the Terms of Use which include things such as spam, harassment, violating laws, commerical activities etc. The group will often give valuable advice to event organisers to support you in making great CS events!
We strongly advise you to check out the Meeting Message Guidelines for more important information on sending out invitations.
When creating an event where couchsurfers are being invited to attend a concert or a festival or a play or a whole range of other non specific CouchSurfing events – remember that the event you create should have some way people can meet up at it – in this way CouchSurfing communal activity is enhanced – asking people to attend a non specific CouchSurfing event as individuals could be seen by some as mere advertising or spam. This CouchSurfing communal dimension is an important feature of a CS event - without it its not possible to send out invitations for what would then not be a CS event!
CouchSurfing aims always to be inclusive and open - events that are religious or political can hinder this.
Events can be deleted by CS admins as per the Terms of Use
Before you Create an Event
Events SHOULD NOT be used to...
- Find a couch or someone to show you around a new place. For this, please use CouchSearch
- Find travel mates. To find travelers to join, try posting your plans to the relevant local/global group
The 6 W's
Remember that creating an event requires a good deal of organization and planning, so take some time to think about and define the “6 W’s" of any logistical challenge.
- WHO is your event intended for?
- WHAT is the purpose of the event?
- WHEN is the event?
- WHERE is the event being held?
- WHY are you having the event?
- HOW are you going to manage, communicate, and promote the event?
The event tool is primarily useful for helping you communicate and promote your event. The event tool accomplishes this in two ways. One way is that it creates a record of the event that will show up in the Events page. This allows users to see all of the events that are going on in CS and to filter them by different criteria. The other function that helps you promote your event is the Couchsearch! functionality, which helps you define the group of CS Members you want to invite to the event and to send them a message (through the CS messaging system) that give them you event details.
In order to use this feature, it's useful to do some thinking followed by some test searches on the Couchsearch! page to find an appropriate group of members to invite. The last 30 CouchSearch criteria parameters you specified are stored under the Recent Searches tab on your profile. The results returned from these searches make up the potential group of members that you can invite to your event.
Two final points is to search the Events Page for the meeting you are trying to create to confirm that you are not duplicating someone else's work and to liaise where appropriate with local CS ambassadors/event organisers - its polite and also a great help in organising great events with local knowledge and encouragement!
How to create a Meeting
Assuming you have defined the “6 W’s" of your meeting you can then Create an Event.
The following information is required.
- Events Name
- Country
- City
- Event Summary
- Event Description
- Event Begin Date/Time (Note: All dates are in US format (MM/DD/YY). You can input the dates as follows: Oct 23, 2006 (or whatever variation of that) but the dates will still be shown in US format on the meetings page.)
It is useful to participants to fill in the following fields if applicable.
- State/Province
- Address
- Directions
- EventEnd Date/Time
Beyond the above the following is a list of the default settings of the page.
- Private: No (meaning that this will be a publicly viewable event)
- Confirmed: Yes, the event will definitely happen
- Number of attendees needed: 0 (0 indicates the event is not tentitive)
- Confirm Automatically: Yes
- Event Begin Date/Time: will automatically fill in the the current date and time.
- Event End Date/Time: will automatically fill in the the current date and time.
Event Address
The Event Address field should contain information similar to the following
- Anytown Park, 555 Someplace NW Street, Anycity, DC, 202-555-5555
Note that this field is not limited to just the street address.
Event Photos
A photo can add spice to your event and can indicate where and how your event can be identified. Note that this is a single photo and is not where you can post Event Photos
Event Directions
Put the best directions possible to your event. As of right now CouchSurfing does not include something such as Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, or MSN maps. This field will not accept HTML.
Event Description
The Event Description can contain the same html your profile can contain. It is useful to be as exciting and as simple about your plans as is possible. Remember that the point is that people who are searching for events need information about what is happening so a one line description is not likely to encourage them to come to the event.
How to send event invitations to everybody in the city/region
Once you created an event, you can send out a message to the members of the relevant groups that you are a member of and to couchsurfers in the area that you're organizing the event. Sounds difficult? It’s not!
Go to CouchSearch and make some different searches for the areas you want to send the message to: i.e. all couchsurfers in Stockholm that have logged in the last 30 days or all members in Paris that have "cinema" somewhere in their profile. Once that’s done, go back to your event. Click on it.
Go to Send out meeting invitations. In the column “ Post message to selected Groups”, choose to click for relevant groups (you need to be a member in the groups to choose them). In the column “Send to CouchSearch! Results”, choose the couchsearch results you want.
Remember that you are allowed one unlimited search (more than 300 members) and any number of limited (results less than 300) searches per invitation request ... if you need to do multiple unlimited searches will need to do a invitation request for each search. Please do not send multiple invitation requests for the same event - try to have all relevant couchsearch result and groups included on the one invitation request.
Click “Save and Send Message as Soon as Possible”, and you are all done. Now this message will go to a group that will check it and then send it out. Usually this takes between one hour and two days, so the sooner you post, the bigger chance you’ll get it out in time.
See
Tentative Events
CouchSurfing gives you the option to create an event that is dependant on the number of attendees. This is the arbitrary number that you say is a critical mass for your event and makes it worth while to happen. In order to initiate this function, you'll need to set the following on your event management page (or on the Create an Event page when you first create the event): Confirmed:
- Set to "No, this event is tentitive"
Number of attendees needed:
- set to a number above "0"
Confirm by Date/Time:
- has a deadline date in the mm/dd/yy hh:mm am/pm format
Confirm Automatically:
- set to "Yes" (or no if you'd like to do this manually)
Event Photos
Once your event is done you might want to upload some photos of the event to share with other meeting participants. In order to do this, you'll want to go to your own profile and upload pictures into a new folder. Once you've uploaded photos in your profile, you can go to your settings and select the "Event Photos" drop down.
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