I organize meetups on a regular base here in Germany and also in other countries like the upcoming one in Prague on December 11th. 2021. Announcing it at the Forum early enough is indeed very important. I do it at least 8 weeks in advance and check regularly planned meetups in my neighboring countries too at the Forum I might could attend but with the Covid-19 restrictions still going on, it is difficult. Travelling restrictions are still in place and might get sharpened with the new variant on the loose.
I agree completely with Paolo about the usage of the Postcrossing logo usage guidelines.
I usually don’t care about how many cards participants bring to the meetups for signing but I wouldn’t accept a shoe box full (which I had at a meeting I organized). Any organizer of meetups is free to say how many cards any participant can bring in advance. Meetup books are also very popular nova days.
In my experience, keeping the number of participants at 20 till 25 maximum is perfect because it gives anyone the time to talk with all participants, except for those meetings which are over a full weekend.
Kind regards from Berlin
Holger
Thanks for your feedback on that, I thought about those translations as more of a service and didn’t consider “legal” trouble with the label as “official” … But I’d gladly help translate to German (it’s always easier to translate into your native language). 
Hello everybody.
Rules, of course, wonderful. But there are many situations in which it is not possible to follow them completely.
I have been organizing meetings in Moscow for a year and a half. The number of people who want to come to meetings are usually from 60 to 70 people. Sometimes more. It is not always easy and simply to coordinate the room for comfortable finding so many people.
With popularization and increased interest in collecting oncoming cards, many participants comes, which are not interested in communication in life. They need exclusively postcards in large quantities for exchanges in the world and within the project.
For meetings and communication of people at a truly enthusiastic postcrossong, I collect a mini meeting, where the number of participants limit to 15 people. I find interesting places - museums, exhibitions for creating an interesting atmosphere. At the moment, in Russia there are rules for visiting cultural events only by QR-Coda, which also extremely complicates all agreements and registration of postcards in advance. Sometimes it is possible to make exclusively in a few days or even a day per day. Everyone knows about restrictive measures in connection with COVID-19.
But these meetings are fully devoted to full-fledged communication. Opportunities to show or see collections of postcards or stamps of participants. Discussion of postcrossing news, new artists and illustrators.
Please include in the rules the opportunity to register meetings in a shorter time for mini meetings.
And for large leave current deadlines for at least 2 weeks before the event.
I really hope for understanding on your part.
Thank you for your feedback!
I’m not sure I understand how a shorter timeframe will help with mini-meetings… It shouldn’t change anything is the meeting is announced well in advance, right?
Due to the constantly changing rules on restrictions on public seats, some of the participants do not have the ability to visit them. Introduction or cancel code. The cost of excursion facilities in the direction of magnification is changing. There is no possibility to promptly preprit circulation cards for other participants. Therefore, such meetings are constantly under threat of disruption. You have to adapt to constant changes.
But such a format of meetings is very important. Since it is the active participants in the project. People do not come for hundreds of postcards for postcards. New new meetings are discussed. Topics are selected, activity is offered.
I want the full development of the project. And there are solid restrictions on all sides.
My 2 cents…
- What’s a mini meeting and what’s not a mini meeting? Where should the line be drawn? What is considered a mini meeting one place might not be a mini meeting somewhere else.
- A meeting is a meeting regardless of the number of participants. So the rules should be the same for all of them. Everyone should have the possibility to plan attending the meetup, and the meetup should always be mentioned well in advance. It’s better to open the thread early and say something like “at the moment its possible for 15 persons to meet, but that might change. If the number is reduced, the first ones to sign up will be allowed to join.”
- The guidelines should be the same during the pandemic and after the pandemic. And the restrictions vary from country to country, and from time to time. I think the guidelines should tell us to follow the local rules and that’s it. No amendments or changes or anything because of Covid-19.
I might have forgotten something I thought of earlier today…
I completely agree with you, @Norway_girl! I would also not consider 15 people a Mini-Meeting …
I also think that official meetups should be open to all participants, while the number might be limited - whether it’s due to pandemic restrictions or just because meetups of too many people become … impersonal. But it should always be first come, first serve and never “I handpick those 15 people” for an official meetup. @Afonya If you found a group that gets along well, great. Gather frequently - even better. But don’t put a postcrossing meetup label (including cards with the official logo!) on it - because it’s not inclusive!
I understand there are a lot of postcrossing enthusiasts in Moscow - meeting more often with less people might be the way to go then.
Hello everyone.
I 'm confused by the rule “Meetups should be open to everyone in Postcrossing, without discrimination”, because many may perceive it later as a reason for complaint.
I’ll explain why I think so - in St. Petersburg, I organize only small meetings of up to 15 people, and it’s not just about the restrictions associated with covid.
As Afonya wrote earlier, unfortunately, with popularization and increased interest in collecting oncoming cards, many participants comes, which are not interested in communication in life. They need exclusively postcards in large quantities for exchanges in the world and within the project. These people don’t want to communicate at all. I had cases when I was just starting to organize postcrosser meetings and then we still had no restrictions on the number of people, we invited everyone. And at these meetings, people came to us who either ran literally for 5 minutes JUST to pick up the postcards printed specifically for the meeting, or they didn’t even tell us their names, they just asked us all to sign the postcards printed for the meeting, or put their stamps on them, and after that they also left. I understand that you want your project to develop and as many people as possible to learn about it. And we, for our part, do everything possible to tell other people about it, holding not only meetings, but also other events, such as exhibitions and master classes. But I also really ask you to understand me - I am absolutely not interested when 50-100 bangs come to my meetings just for the sake of postcards, and not because they want to talk to us. And as a result of this situation, we are forced to just sit for several hours and only sign, sign, sign a large number of postcards, not being able to talk at all. Such meetings do not bring me joy. As a result, after such meetings, I return home tired of signing postcards for several hours and sad from the realization that these people do not need communication. It’s like going to a job you don’t like.
Therefore, I ask that it still be possible to organize meetings with a limited number of participants. And in general, remove this wording from the rules, otherwise you may simply be flooded with complaints that someone could not get to some meeting. When people write to me that they would like to join us, I always immediately ask about the reason why they would like to come, and if people say that because of the postcard, then I naturally refuse them. But if a person says that he wants to talk, we are always glad to see him. In the announcement of the meeting, I always write that we will be glad to meet new people, especially if they have never been to such meetings before. And I believe that all the organizers on the ground are also quite adequately assessing the situation. I don’t think that someone will just arrange a private meeting on a whim for no reason.
Lots of nuances here, many due to the limitations of language and interpretation I think.
The term “mini-meeting” has been used. Not one I have heard before. I have heard that there are huge, weeklong events in Europe, have not seen that here. But I feel like a meetup is a meetup, regardless of the number of attendees.
The term “official meetups” has been used. What makes a gathering of postcrossers an “official” meetup as opposed to just a meetup of people who share the same interest? That it features a card that uses the official logo? That is was published on the Postcrosser website, and thus “sanctioned” by the folks who run the site?
The term “meetup” is used. Meetup is an online service based platform focused on facilitating gatherings of people with shared interests (Meetup). It is very confusing that Postcrossing uses this term for their gatherings.
If I understand the issues brought up by @afionya and @Beatitudinem correctly, they have attendees who come solely to receive signed meetup cards with the official logo, which they either collect or trade independent of participation in postcrossing otherwise. Those who participate routinely in postcrossing (i.e.exchange cards) would likely not call those sorts of attendees postcrossers. I think the intent (if I may be so bold to interpret) of @paulo Paolo and @meiadeleite in stressing in the proposed guidelines that " * Meetups should be open to everyone in Postcrossing, without discrimination." is inclusivity amongst postcrossing participants. People we would all call postcrossers because they participate in exchanging cards.
I think everyone needs to recognize how difficult this scenario is to manage. In my mind, there is a difference between rules and guidelines in the English language. Rules are hard and fast, black and white. They must be followed or there is a violation. Guidelines are indications of desired intent; they state how something should be done to result in a preferred end state of affairs, but they are not hard and fast. I think the word “guidelines” was carefully chosen with due consideration, and I am delighted that Postcrossing is seeking feedback from end users here.
The organizers of Postcrossing are attempting to provide a vision for what good looks like at a well organized and run meetup. Thank you for that! Such a vision will likely not to fit all scenarios that an organizer might encounter, nor will it satisfy everyone else’s vision of what meetup could or should be. That is the way it goes when you work with humans, they are a challenging bunch!
One model that might be considered is how the geocaching hobby handles gatherings (which they call events). There are established guidelines for such events which do require least two week notice. Organizers must submit proposed events for approval which includes evidence of the meeting venue agreeing to host, by the way, where that is applicable. There are a group of sanctioned volunteer approvers, broken up into regions around the world, who then approve such events. Only after that approval are they listed on the geocaching website as official events. My suspicion is that this model is not currently a workable scenario for Postcrossing as no such volunteer network of approvers exists, and standing one up would be a beast. Would you volunteer for the role of an approver, vetting an unknown number of events in your region? It is a lot to take on.
In the end, whether it is rules or guidelines, compliance is primarily based on the good will and behavior of organizers and participants. One might note that a rule that cannot be enforced is really not a rule at all to someone who does not care to abide by it. Postcrossing is not really in a position to adjudicate and enforce the rules or guidelines it establishes for meetups, other than to ban individuals from participation. There is no mechanism in place to verify that participants who attend a meeting I set up are actually postcrossers who routinely participate in postcard exchanges. Similarly, there is no mechanism in place to verify that people participating in the forums where numerous cards are exchanged via direct swap and round robins are participating postcrossers. There are people who are on this site (both the main one and the forum) who hold multiple accounts. People will bend the rules/ to their needs. It is what humans do. Kudos to Ana and Paolo for doing their best to manage this!
I think @sannah82 explained our idea well: meetings can have a limited number of places for whatever reason, but those places should not be filled up with the organizer’s friends before the meeting is even open. Or, a meeting shouldn’t be only for the people who are in a certain Whatsapp group, for instance.
We should give everyone in the community the same chance to join the gathering — that is what we mean by saying that meetings should be open to everyone in Postcrossing.
I consider a meetup “official” when it has been posted to the PC forum (and then be in the list on the website) - and according to the Logo guidelines, a meeting needs to be published there in order to print postcards with the postcrossing logo on it.
I use the terms of “meeting” and “meet-up” (hyphened or not) interchangeably. Not sure if that’s a European thing or if the website or the term came first.
I agree - rules and guidelines are only as good as the possibility to enforce them. So, common sense and hoping for the best?!?
The model of “making official” that you describe from geocaching is what’s done in the forum - without the regional part.
@Beatitudinem - With the exception of some clinically shy postcrossers: That behavior is just plain rude! Mass signing should also not be the focus of a gathering as stated by @paulo and @meiadeleite in their initial guideline post.) I have mailed cards to people that were looking for meeting cards, but those were unsigned. But I feel that for some, signed/stamped meeting cards are some kind of a postcrossing crypto currency. 
It’s positive to see discussion going on around this — that’s the point of putting it up for feedback.
I think there’s some confusion though, so I’ll try to address some points to help the discussion to continue in a good direction.
Meetups should be open to everyone in Postcrossing, without discrimination
I think @meiadeleite has already cleared this bit but I’d like to go again into it because we really think the part of no discrimination is important — it’s no accident that this is the first thing on the Meetups guidelines!
The “without discrimination” doesn’t mean meetups should have an unlimited number of spots, or that the host should cope with as many people as there are interested ones. Events often have constraints that put limits on the number of participants: be it the space where it will take place, or limitations of an activity that is part of the meetup program, sometimes even the number of available beds/hotels!
And as much as I like to watch the owners of little corner shops open their eyes and mouths in disbelief when they see a huge number of postcrossers suddenly flocking around their postcards stands 
, that is not the goal of this! I think we can all agree that a large amount of participants doesn’t necessarily translate into a nice event. Both small and large meetings can be great in their own ways: we are not trying to inflate meetups numbers here — we’d rather have better events (of any size) than more of them.
So, in short, “without discrimination” doesn’t mean one has to accept an unlimited amount of people.
What it does mean however is that there shouldn’t exist a selective way to decide who is able to participate or not, by filtering the participants through some arbitrary criteria. We want these events to be welcoming to every member of the Postcrossing community.
For example, we have been seeing some meetups where postcrossers are refused participation because the meeting was full from the start when it was announced to the community on the forum, as it was organized elsewhere among a small group of friends and so other members of the community can not realistically join it; effectively, it’s a meeting of friends, not a Postcrossing meetup — even if it may have postcards in the mix and even if they may all be postcrossers. As @sannah82 said,
If it is not open to the whole Postcrossing community, then is not welcoming. If it is a group of friends meeting, great — but it shouldn’t be called a Postcrossing meetup and it shouldn’t be added to the meetups calendar (as it is not letting anyone know of something they can join).
We have also seen some other abuses in terms of discrimination related with events that I don’t want to go into here, but enough to say that it is not the kind of things we want Postcrossing to be connect it as it doesn’t even follow the “Be friendly” of the Community Guidelines.
Now, having said all this, we also see important issues being brought up by @Afonya and @Beatitudinem which are relevant to be taken into account into the discussion here:
This is sad and not something we consider to be a Postcrossing Meetup, really.
If (some) people come to these events just for grabbing postcards and go away, without actually meeting others and taking part of the activities, then it looks to me more like a pop-up shop than an event where people meet. It is called a meetup after all! If the event has some program/activities, and people are not taking part in them, then I would say they are not event participants in the first place?
I think events where some people just come to literally pick up (meeting) postcards and deliberately not meet people is surely something that we do not want to encourage, so I do understand the reasoning for the suggestion about removing the “without discrimination” part as to make it possible prevent that kind of participations.
These Meetup guidelines are a good place to handle these issues. However, I would very much prefer not to cripple the Meetups guidelines through removing the without discrimination part which we think is important. Instead, I would suggest we add (or change) something in the Meetup guidelines that avoid this type of situations so that the hosts are not faced with it in the first place. Perhaps we could re-work the following section:
It’s fine to write some postcards during the meetup, but please try to limit the number of postcards you ask others to sign: allow postcrossers time to chat and be social as well.
into highlighting further that Meetups are meant to be social events that one joins and takes part on (and not just drives by to pick up postcards 
). Does anyone have suggestions on how to best frame this?
Or, is the first paragraph (“an opportunity for members to meet face to face, chat and make friends, share their enthusiasm for Postcrossing or just have fun together”) already covering it, allowing hosts to require participants to not just drive-by-for-meeting-postcards?
I understand that the pandemic has brought additional restrictions that makes organizing these events harder and more unpredictable, with unplanned changes: this is to be expected these days (unfortunately), and participants are aware of the situation we are all facing so, hopefully they are understanding of changes too.
But I think the way here would be for the host to let everyone know from the start (which ideally should be the 2 weeks or more in advance) that changes may happen and should join only under that understanding, or, that some details might need to be finalized closer to the date. If local regulations prevent the meetup from taking place at the planned date, I’m sure participants will understand that it gets cancelled. I think the community gains more from the advance notice about meetups so that anyone can join, than it might loose from the ones that are “announced” last minute that only a few know about.
I’d like to note here that these Meetups guidelines are not only for this pandemic period (which we all hope goes away soon) but to be ongoing for the foreseeable future. It would be better to have some exceptions (if we have to) to the Meetups guidelines during pandemic, than some Meetup guidelines that only make sense during the pandemic. Meetups exist for over a decade and hopefully will continue for more to come, so we should think of them in the context of the so called normal times (even if it is hard to think of it right now).
And on that note,
To be honest, I’m not sure how the whole thing got named that way. 
It could have been me… or @mundoo, or someone, that many years ago used the term and it ended up sticking and the forum category got named that way. Or maybe it was the other way around. Or maybe we were inspired by meetup.com indeed since it was bigger at the time. I don’t think there’s a way to know anymore. @mundoo, any idea?
In any case, I sort of like that we have our own moniker for the meetings, even if it is kind of a typo.
Paulo, thank you so much for understanding my question and being so attentive! This is very valuable and important.
I will be waiting for suggestions and advice from you and other experienced meeting organizers.
I’d be interested in some more direction or discussion about this:
At our meetings so far, I have designed and had cards printed, which people have signed and distributed at the meetup. Generally, it’s been only me as organiser who brought cards, although I’d be very happy for anyone else to do so.
Although our meet ups are very sociable and there is plenty of chatting, I’ve found that people very much want to be able to get a decent number of cards at the meet up, so we always have quite a lot of cards, and are signing/stamping throughout.
I don’t know that this can or should be strictly set in the guidelines (ie. a set number per participant), but I’d be interested to hear what people think, especially if people have suggestions for ways to change the dynamic a bit here.
Also more generally, it would be good to have some suggested other activities in the guidelines (maybe even a wiki?). This also helps move things away from sitting and signing…
Thoughts on card signing:
I have been to meetups with the following scenarios:
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Only the organizer has made cards for the meetup, and only a single type of card
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Only the organizer has made cards for the meetup, but they have created more than one type
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Not only the organizer, but other participants have created cards for the meetup as well
In all cases in my experience, there has been no charge to any participants for the cards. Signing can be either hand written signature, rubber stamp or sticker. There has been an expectation that every attendee would sign at the very least a sufficient number of cards such that every attendee would then be able to leave with a given number of cards signed by all attendees. As an example, 20 attendees all sign 20 x 15 = 300 cards and each attendee then leaves with 15 completely signed cards. Even in this small example, the numbers can get high. I have seen hosts bring 1000 or 1500 cards, and guests bring an additional 500 or 1000 cards. Usually there is social discussion around the signing table(s). But it gets limiting as you can only talk to those seated near you, and the cards just keep coming in a never ending torrent. There is a point at which that becomes exhausting, both to manage in terms of who has signed which cards yet, and merely as an end user expected to sign hundreds of cards. Setting numbers in the guidelines is not enforceable, and how would you come up with what number is appropriate? It is very subjective I think. It is my though that participation in this part of any event should be voluntary and not compulsory.
I like the idea of limiting the event card to the one being produced by the host, but I suspect that not everyone will agree with that. I find it somewhat confusing and frustrating that there can be more thane card for the same event, but that is just me.
I think @helent’s idea of providing suggestions for other activities is an excellent one.
In the vague recesses of my memory I think the title for that section was created/named by gridlock (Debashis). Certainly many of us were using meetup.com in those days for bookcrossing meetings and conventions. The former forum title didn’t get migrated across to here in the entirety.
We can easily edit the title if you want but you also have Meetups on the main site menu for the calendar.
We want to finish these Meetups Guidelines as we’d like them to be in place for the time that the world is going to be opening up after all these pandemic waves.
The main pending issue is how to handle members who may come to the meetings with the sole purpose of picking up postcards for their exchanges and not being social with others and/or not taking part of the rest of the event.
We think the following parts of the proposed text already do a fair job at addressing that:
The Postcrossing meetups are community organized events. They are an opportunity for members to meet face to face, chat and make friends, share their enthusiasm for Postcrossing or just have fun together.
It’s fine to write some postcards during the meetup, but please try to limit the number of postcards you ask others to sign: allow postcrossers time to chat and be social as well.
Moreover, we think meeting hosts have other ways to handle this particular issue — while still respecting the Meetups Guidelines being proposed here.
For example, a host/organizer can set a reasonable limit to the number of postcards each person can have for others to sign (as some meetings already do). This request can be done on the meeting announcement and can be accompanied with an explanation that the goal of that particular event is to create a cozy/friendly meeting for the community, with opportunities for everyone to be social. Having the Meetup Guidelines in place should help further emphasize this.
If anyone has any suggestions or improvements to tackle this issue, please do say so! It would be particularly relevant to hear suggestions from meetup organizers being directly affected by this problem.
And if there are other things to take into consideration for the Meetup Guidelines, please let us know so that we can move forward with publishing the final text. Everyone’s feedback is welcome!
There was a recent meetup held nearby. The host was contacted by a prospective attendee and asked to provide the files created to print the meetup card, so that they could print additional cards to bring and have signed. The host declined, but this is also another issue that you might want to address. Some meetup organizers create multiple cards for their events, and some meetup attendees either attempt to duplicate the event cards, or create additional cards of their own to bring. Any of these scenarios lead to more cards being passed around for signature.
I also think that the guidelines will likely end up being a working document. While I applaud your effort to gather feedback and input and incorporate it in the development of the guidelines, I suspect that once they are officially promulgated you may well get more feedback.
I don’t know exactly what happened there — seems a strange request/decision on both sides, but I’m probably missing details. In any case, I’m not sure it’s possible to have guidelines that specify how to go about every single detail, when each case is different. I think going for broad questions that the majority can agree with is more important.
The meetup guidelines being discussed already do remind that meetup postcards are optional, and also that anyone can create one. There’s sometimes an incorrect perception that only the organizer can do postcards for the meetup, but there’s no reason for that other than it being the most common case, but there’s no such a rule anywhere — anyone can bring postcards with them to send at the meeting, which can be store bought, homemade, or even something personalized for the meeting.
Like the Community Guidelines or the Forum Guidelines, I do expect that improvements may be done to it over time, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a “working document”. For these to be reasonably effective they shouldn’t be constantly changing so that the community knows what’s in place and what to expect. So, yes, I expect changes to be done in the future, but I think it’s on everyone’s interest to avoid frequent changes to it.
The feedback will be welcome, but new ideas need to be batched together for a future update down the road, again, so that we are not constantly changing and the community know what to expect.
That said, the feedback ideally should be beforehand (now!) so that the first version of the text takes as much into account as possible already. We are currently messaging some meetup organizers to bring their attention to this topic and hope to wrap up soon if there’s no new input to consider.