How to make a good meeting

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.

Categories and Examples of Events

• Meetup (Dinner or drinks with the local surfers)
• Excursion (Group trip through the city, or to dinner and a museum - get group discounts!)
• Music (Concert)
• Film (Movie theatre)
• Dance (Salsa lessons)
• Culture (Museum or sightseeing)
• Education (Local workshop or speech)
• Flash Mobs (Mass pillow fight!)
• Other Events - Be Creative!

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. 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, etc.

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.

In addition to the above it is also useful to search out any CS Groups that might be 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. 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.

One final point 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.

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.

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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