Long Now has members all over the world, and one of the most frequent requests that the Foundation receives is how can members connect with each other and host conversations and events around long-term thinking in their own area.
We have created this Long Now Meetup Guide to provide some broad guidelines and point to some online resources to help members get started with events in their own area.
Long Now considers these autonomous Meetups by members to be very valuable to a deeper and wider dialog around long-term thinking. But due to our small staff size and the number of projects already being worked on by the Foundation, we do not have the bandwidth to individually manage and support these member events.
We’re hoping with this Guide, members will be encouraged to start events in their own area and meet some of their fellow members while exploring long-term thinking. When a new Meetup group is getting started, Long Now can reach out to our existing members in that geographic area to connect them to the new group. Both Long Now London and Long Now Boston offer inspiring examples of what Long Now Meetups can become!
Long Now Meetup Guide
How to set up a Long Now Meetup group:
- Create an account on Meetup.
- Once you have an account, “start a Meetup group”.
- Meetup will ask for the city in which this group is taking place.
- It then will ask you what your Meetup Group is interested in, put in “Long Now”. This will add your Group to the larger “Topic” of Long Now, which makes it easier for people to discover you.
- You then need to give your Meetup a name, we recommend including the name of your city and “Long Now” in the title of your Meetup.
- Add a description to the group – please remember at some point in the copy to mention that this group is inspired by Long Now and not officially affiliated with the Foundation.
- Once you have a group, create an event within the group and give a description of what people can expect at the event.
- Once you have your group & event set-up, please compose an email that you would like forwarded to Long Now members in your city, and send it to us at membership@longnow.org. We’ll forward your email (with the links to your meetup group & event) to members in your area on your behalf.
- If you want some examples/references for your group & event description, please feel free to check out the other Meetups on the “Long Now” Topic page.
What Long Now can do for member groups and events:
- When a new Meetup group is getting started, Long Now can reach out to our existing members in that geographic area to connect them to the new group.
- Long Now Meetups do not have to be member-only; anyone interested in long-term thinking is welcomed.
- Long Now will supply a logo with a tagline that says the group/event is ‘inspired by’ Long Now, email us at membership@longnow.org for the files.
- Long Now provides basic instructions on how to set up a Long Now Meetup group, but we can not do the setup for events or organizers.
- In some cases we might refer a speaker or let a local organizer know if someone we know is in your area. This is at our discretion.
- Depending on the event and our own production schedule, we may be able to help promote a local event through social media. This is at our discretion.
Guidelines for member organized events and groups:
- Member meetup groups and events are organized under their own agency and in no way represent Long Now as an organization. There is no title conferred by Long Now to the group/event organizers, nor can we provide email addresses, business cards or other collateral.
- Long Now can not provide any liability coverage, financial oversight, money handling, contract review, event advice, or other services for these groups/events.
- Use of Long Now’s name in discussions with other institutions, or use of logo needs to always be with the caveat that the group/event is inspired by Long Now, not that they are representing Long Now as an institution.
- Long Now generally cannot provide connections to our speakers or board members unless asked by them, as we already tax them with internal requests and can’t add anything more to that.
- To avoid confusion, Long Now requests that member events and organizers don’t use exact names of our events and speaking series such as Seminars About Long-term Thinking (SALT).
- Events may be filmed or recorded at the discretion of the member group. If they are posted online or in some way re-broadcast we request to review the media before our name is associated with it.
- Long Now does not have any expectations around whether or not events or groups need to charge for tickets or dues of any kind. Any charges or fund raising for a member group is solely at the discretion of the organizer. It should be clear that those funds are not being raised by Long Now, but by that event or organizer for that group.
- Long Now requests member organizations use Meetup to organize the events. This helps set correct expectations from members, makes organizing easier, and Long Now can keep referring people to the platform instead of having to keep track of each group individually.
- Long Now requests that no domains be used with our name in them (other than the Meetup one supplied) that might lead people to believe the event or member group is organized by Long Now.
- It is our long-term hope to build out features within our own internal membership system to better support local area member groups; if new features become available over time, we will notify all of our members and group organizers.
Potential Long Now Meetup ideas:
- Conversation groups seeded by ideas from our lecture series, blog and website.
- Watch the live-stream or pre-recorded Long Now Seminars and Conversations at The Interval with a small group and include a discussion afterwards.
- Presentations and lectures by people doing interesting work that involves or touches on Long Now themes and ideas.
- Field trips, guided tours and excursions to locations that have a connection to Long Now themes and ideas.
- Workshops, classes and maker events that explore or touch on Long Now themes and ideas.
Online resources for Long Now Meetup groups:
- Long Now Meetups: The home page for Long Now meetups around the world.
- Long Now Membership: Members are an integral part of Long Now and support our mission to foster long-term thinking. Please email us at membership@longnow.org to receive the Long Now logo files.
- Long Now Live Stream: The Live Stream of our lecture series; can be watched with a small group.
- Seminars About Long-term Thinking: Our in-depth lecture series, curated by Stewart Brand; can be watched with a small group.
- Conversations at The Interval: Our dynamic lecture series, held at The Interval; available on our Long Now Live Stream.
- Twitter: Follow our ideas on Twitter and share news and pictures of your events by tweeting @longnow
- Facebook: Follow our ideas, or create a Facebook event to go with your Meetup event.
- Flickr: We have a large selection of photos from Long Now projects and programs available to use.
- Vimeo: A collection of short video pieces about Long Now projects and ideas; can be watched with a small group.
- Blog of the Long Now: Ideas about long-term thinking, good for seeding conversations, discussion groups.
- SoundCloud: Embeddable audio of our Seminars About Long-term Thinking and a selection of Conversations at The Interval.
