While my state was on Phase 1 lockdown, I did not hold or go to any religious events in person. However, Nevada entered Phase 2 in the beginning of summer, and while online activities helped, I wanted to find a way to hold a kindred event safely. I decided on an entirely outdoor event, and since it reached 114 degrees out during the week I wanted to hold it, that meant holding it in the pool.
Starting with knowing this would be held in the pool, I designed an event around the theme of water. Last year during the Rainbow Season ritual, which honors Heimdall at the end of monsoon season, we had also honored Heimdall's Nine Mothers. I thought it would be appropriate to honor his mothers again this summer, just before the beginning of monsoon season. Heimdall's mothers are called the waves of the sea, and daughters of Aegir. Aegir is one of the gods who is of the Jotun tribe, and sometimes Heimdall's Nine Mothers are seen as mermaids. So I came up with the Mermaid Party.
In Part 1, we looked at Team Intrepid as it began an event planning process for a Pagan event without creating any structure for decisionmaking or establishing any goals, and diving right into minutia of the event. And this process can work as long as everyone agrees on everything.
This is the first in a series of posts on event planning. First, I'm going to outline some really bad event planning processes, and then I'll go into some event planning strategies and methods that are a bit more helpful. When I'm teaching leadership workshops, a lot of Pagans ask me, "Why do our teams have such problems working together?" I can tell you that poor event planning processes accounts for a lot of group blow-ups.
I've planned a lot of grassroots events. Some Pagan, some in the scifi-fantasy fandom community, and now some as a fiction author. I've seen a lot of things go wrong. Heck, I've contributed to some of those things going wrong. A lot of how we humans learn seems to unfortunately be through making mistakes of our own. Recently, I've had a few people asking me for advice on event planning. And as it happens, I've been part of a few online event planning processes that have reminded me of some sure-fire recipes for disaster.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
