TIMELINE

Staying calm and having a great planning season

Timeline Resources

1. Early plans at Miro (2022) (note: we didn’t use the workshop schedule planning idea on the far right)
2. Emails from previous years can give a sense of what needs to be on the timeline (note: we didn’t send enough general announcements to the ThinkTank in 2022, we were too busy planning.  We probably should have sent them monthly instead of in clumps?)
3. Last-minute plans at crunch time to-do list from 2022

General Timeline Overview

This is a general timeline based on the 2021 and 2022 organizing experience. It assumes that enough resources are now in place to ensure a smooth, timely planning experience.

Prior Event

• Announce that you need volunteers for the next event
• Announce language exchange
  • to keep potential new volunteers involved and engaged

9-11 months before the event

• Host language exchange weekly
  • Establishes varying degrees of en/es & es/en among potential organizers
  • Keeping people involved between events
  • The next time there is a language exchange it would be cool to work on a mini low-consequence project together
    • Example: creating bilingual bike vocab resources

9 months before the event

• Schedule initial planning meetings
  • Update and share resources slideshow
• Recruit more new volunteers
  • Some degree of bilingual strongly encouraged
  • You don't have to know how to do everything, these traits will take you far:
    • commitment
    • enthusiasm
    • willingness to learn
• welcome new volunteers
  • getting to know
  • what are their skills and interests
• review language justice resources

8 months before the event

Decide

• Make important decisions
  • Decide language justice or other DEI goals for the year
  • Identify event "theme" (if any?)
  • Select event date
  • Start considering which specific people/groups you want to invite to host workshops (if any)

Write & Translate

• Create preliminary event description (due in 1 month)
  • write description (who/what/when/where/why/how) - check past events and email templates for inspiration
  • translate

Delegate

• Get someone to design a flier (due in 1 month)
• Ask the tech team for access to bikebike.org

7 months before the event

Outreach

• Post the flier and preliminary event description to
  • bikebike.org
  • instagram
  • facebook
  • any other social media this year's team is interested in
  • buttondown
  • ThinkTank
  • A wiki page for the event (& link to the page from MediaWiki:Sitenotice)
• Contact any specific people or groups you want to invite to host workshops (there may be a relevant draft in email templates)

Write & Translate

• Prepare announcement of event launch / open registration (due in 1 month)
  • Draft the announcement (who/what/when/where/why) - check email templates for inspiration
  • Include requests for volunteers & interpreters, either in this announcement or as separate announcements to be sent around the same time
    • Tech volunteers to help run Zoom sessions
    • Facilitators for recurring workshops like FTWNB, BIPOC, and possibly a Disabilities group
    • Any other volunteers you think might be useful
    • Translators and interpreters - we have some we've worked with in the past, but there's some turnover and it's nice to have people in the bike collective community so they are more familiar with the language
  • Translate it

6 months before the event

Launch the event!

Tech

• Open registration & workshop proposals on bikebike.org

Outreach

• Post the announcement that registration is open
  • bikebike.org
  • instagram
  • facebook
  • any other social media this year's team is interested in
  • buttondown
  • ThinkTank
  • A wiki page for the event
• Post/send the request for volunteers & interpreters, if that is a separate announcement

Recurring

• Continue sending/posting reminders that registration is open every ?? weeks until the event
• Continue requesting volunteers & interpreters until you're confident that all roles are filled and you have some backup people in case anyone has to cancel.

5 months before the event

Tech

• Train a new tech coordinator on tech setup & what the zoom tech volunteers need to know

Recurring

Continue work on all recurring tasks, enjoy the company of your fellow volunteers

4 months before the event

Recurring

all previous recurring tasks that haven't ended, and...

• Start reminding workshop hosts that you need information for them (continue until you have all the info or until the deadline in 2 months)
  • Any workshop materials (handouts, slideshows, videos, pre-recorded audio). Anything that needs translation absolutely must be submitted 2 months before the event. That also allows us to post them to archive.org before the event.
  • Schedule availability - we need to know when they're available by 2 months before the event so we can plan the workshop schedule.

Yes, it really may take 2 months and repeated reminders to get this info from some people.

3 months before the event

Recurring

Continue work on all recurring tasks, enjoy the company of your fellow volunteers

2 months before the event

Deadlines for

• submitting presentation/workshop materials
• telling the organizers your time zone and availability for hosting your presentation/workshop

Create schedules for

1. Workshops - DUE IMMEDIATELY, TAKE A WEEK TO DO THIS AT MOST.

2. Interpretation

NOTE: You must create the workshop schedule before interpreters can coordinate among themselves to figure out the interpretation schedule.  

Tech

• Set up the zoom rooms (or whatever you're using if not Zoom) for the event

Announcements

1. Post the workshop schedule.

2. Announce workshop schedule (link to wiki) to all channels