How to organize a camp

Organizing a meeting or camp for hospitality exchange people is not too difficult, but some things should be taken care of.

Types

There are different types of camps/meetings. Depending on the time you have and the amount of people.

Regular Meeting / One day
- The best ones are the spontaneous ones when you have a guest over, just SMS to several people in your town if they would like to meet up the same evening..
Camp / Several days
- Camp -Style Several (organized) activities
  - Look for a big place to where people can camp & be

- 'Home'-Style
  - People from your town take several guests
  - Central meeting place
  - Several (organized) activities

Structure

There are different Types of meetings. Interesting is to split those ones up and think about different structure they could have.

- 'Party'-Style
- 'Workshop'-Style
  - 'Lectures'
  - 'Open Space Technology'

Preparation

Before you announce, pick a good date. Make sure people will be able to come, e.g. choose a date during holidays. Once the date is chosen some travellers might have planned to change their itinerary, or even booked flights, so it's definitely not a good idea to change the date later on.

Also find some people close to you to work on the camp together.

Activities

When you organize meetings/camps over several days with a large number of participants is it excellent when you organize different activities where people can participate in. The normally big party crowd gets split up. Throughout different activities and interaction in smaller groups people will to get to know each other easier.

Workshops
Citytours
Games

Jigsaw Set Ups are especially recommendable and to aspire.

Announcements

announce your meeting on many sites
- the Hospitality Club forum
- the CouchSurfing meet functionality
  - to make your life easier you can have your message sent to all members of a specific group
- you can use the space on this wiki
- contact some, or all, active members in the region where you organize your meeting
- try to contact some active members in other regions, such as other people who are organizing large meetings, this way people who attend that meeting can be informed about your meeting

Budget

try to make sure it won´t be too expensive
- many people will come on a very low budget

Camping

when there is outside camping involved
- try to arrange some spare tents or a place inside where people can sleep, not everyone brings his or her own tent

For a big camp you can set up a seperate website, where people (independent from the networks), can register.

Successful camps

Year	Date	Location	Title	Organizer / Main Network	Categorie	Size	Pictures	Other notes
2006
2005		Latvia / Riga	WinterCamp	/ HC&CS	Camp
		Germany / Freiburg	Freiburg Party	/ HC	Party
		Germany / Berlin	Berlin Beach Camp	/ HC&CS	Camp
		France / Monnai	Spring Camp - 5th Birthday of HospitalityClub	pietshah / HC	Camp	350ppl	http://hospitality.andib.net/gallery/Monnai2005
	04/28 - 05/01	Netherlands / The Hague	Dutch Spring Camp - Hospitality Queens Day Tour	hc netherland / HC&CS	Camp	100ppl	http://hospitality.andib.net/gallery/SpringCamp2005	http://dutchspring.notlong.com/
	03/18 - 03/20	Polen / Poznan	Spring Camp	natuchela / HC	Camp	100ppl	http://hospitality.andib.net/gallery/SpringCamp2005	http://hospitality.andib.net/gallery/album91
	12/27 - 01/04	Lithuania / Vilnius	HC WINTER CAMP & NEW YEAR'S PARTY	jone, augustas, vladas, adia.info, salvo, justee / HC	Camp	250ppl	http://hospitality.andib.net/gallery/WinterCamp2004	the meeting point was a club in the city center, the visitors stayed at hospitalityclub member places http://vilnius.hospitalityclub.org/
		Germany / Berlin	Berlin Party	hc berlin / HC	Party	70ppl
2004	09/03 - 09/05	Germany / Dresden	Summer Camp	Veit / HC	Camp	150ppl	http://hospitality.andib.net/gallery/summercamp2004	Veit's garden

This article is based on text from the HospitalityGuide.net, available under the Creative Commons ShareAlike Attribution license.