EREfest Quail Haven, September 2024

[2Birds1Stone]

After 6,000 miles of meandering over the past month, we made it

[mountainFrugal]

Did you all survive the desert? Each other? Did Pauly Shore make an appearance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-Dome The forum is curious!

[2Birds1Stone]

We thrived in the desert, and it was a profoundly positive experience.

I'll do a better recap soon, but for now have to prepare for freezing lows near the Grand Canyon

[AxelHeyst]

What Happened:

Who Was There
14 People
4 SOs
5 female, 9 male
1 couple ERE-adjacent non-forumites

What Happened
The first couple showed up on Wednesday, by end of day Thursday we were 11, by dinner on Friday we were 14.
One came down with a cold on Saturday and left with their SO to recover somewhere that didn't involve sleeping in a tent, another couple left on Sunday because they had to get back home for a thing, and most of the rest left after breakfast on Monday. Three remained overnight Monday, the last couple left Tuesday morning, and now it's just me and JnG holding down the fort.

Thursday
A volunteer cooked a group meal for dinner. Those who were here helped set things up and generally prepare, and also get arrivees sorted on tent spots. 75% of attendees were repeats so most people needed very little orientation. We had a fire and hung out that night.

Friday
An informal day, mostly spent hanging out and prepping. We did an Improv workshop Friday evening. Volunteers helped gather rocks in preparation for the Erosion Control workshop.

Saturday
Morning: Sourdough 101 workshop
Afternoon: I gave a workshop on off-grid solar electric system design, which included a tour of 3 systems at QH (Serenity, the main house, and the well).
Energy/stoke wasn't high enough for another Improv round, so we punted and just hung out.
Evening: @grundomatic led music with ERE-themed songs around the campfire on his guitar.

Sunday:
Morning: Erosion Control Workshop
Afternoon: How to DJ workshop, Rammed Earth workshop, and a quick Improv warmup session on the wake of the energy from people who were curiously hyped on ramming earth.
Evening: too windy for a fire outside so we hung out in the main house.

Monday:
Had breakfast and most people packed up and left.

Food:
3 Meals/day. Each meal was 'owned' by a different person or couple. The diversity of meals was great, and it was awesome to learn different techniques and approaches to meal prep.

I'll post my own thoughts/debrief soon. Interested in everyone else's thoughts and feedback as well!

[theanimal]

Thanks for the update! I'm very glad to hear it was another success. As I told @AH, now we can be assured he is no one hit wonder.

I am somewhat surprised by the lack of forum activity following fest compared to last year. Perhaps a result of so many returners and the event no longer being something so novel?

[AxelHeyst]

Yes, I would say that the fest24 vibe was a more mellow "well of course we're a bunch of ERE people hanging out in the middle of the desert, that's one of the things we do." It felt more like a bunch of friends hanging out who all happened to be RE'd (or nearly), broadly skilled, with interesting experiences and stories to talk about. At fest23, a lot of people were meeting other ERE people IRL for the first time - definitely meeting a group of ERE people for the first time.

I personally felt like it was a group I was more connected with in ways other than just the forum. More people have more IRL relationships with other ERE people now. Conversations about other ERE people not in attendance were just as likely to be about an IRL interaction (the last time person A had spent a few nights at person B's place and what they'd talked about) as a journal update or interesting post in a thread.

[AxelHeyst]

At fest23, I was so stressed that it might turn into a disaster that I was running on a borderline manic level of energy the whole time. The fact that it did not crater, and that people seemed to have a good time, made it worth it (Type 2 fun). This year I was *way* less stressed (I already had proof of concept) and felt able to actually hang out and enjoy the weekend. Much more type 1 fun, although I slept poorly and felt totally drained by the end.

Some differences between the two years (23 vs 24):

• 20 people vs 14
• One person did the whole menu and one person did all the cooking, vs. each meal was owned by a different person.
• No breakfast vs. breakfast/lunch/dinner
• Workshops were clearly communicated ahead of time this year.
• Almost no one who attended had been to QH before vs. 75+% had been to QH before and didn't need a tour.

Ideas for tweaks next year:

• A bit more higher-level planning for the meals in terms of synergy between ingredients and methods for cooking for larger groups. This might look like cooking a dinner with the intent to generate leftovers for next day's lunch, coordinating types of ingredients so large batches of staples could be cooked up at the beginning of the weekend and then incorporated into multiple dishes.
• Delegate a meal coordinator role earlier to handle ^^ planning, and to offload that stress from me. Meal ownership came together only in the last week before fest and that stressed me out.
• Fewer workshops, perhaps 2 instead of 3.
• More high-level planning of workshop topics, possibly to attempt to cohere workshops around a theme.
• Directed discussion on topics of interest - someone presents the topic for 10-20 minutes and then leads a discussion around it.
• Improve the outdoor shade and comfortable seating situation further (this is integrated in my intent for QH anyway).

Reflections:

• Hanging out with a bunch of ERE and ERE-adjacent people is a singular experience. I've never been around such a dense concentration of high quality people. The breadth of knowledge, skills, and experiences is great to be around.
• I like that hanging out IRL with ERE people is starting to feel normal. The connections between people is starting to feel mature and complex, and now that we're over the sheer novelty of it it feels like we're sinking roots further into the dynamic.
• I'm 80% sure I want to do fest25. I've decided to not commit one way or the other until January 1.

[grundomatic]

I am somewhat surprised by the lack of forum activity following fest compared to last year. Perhaps a result of so many returners and the event no longer being something so novel?

Mrs. Grundomatic and I did a pet-sit in San Diego following fest and didn't bother bringing our computers along. She has agreed to write up her thoughts on fest to provide a non-forum participant perspective. I probably should have written something earlier today before I got back into my home activities.

I think a long weekend is the perfect time frame for the event. To me, the days felt full and went fast, without feeling busy or harried. Thank "desert time" for that (loose and flexible scheduling). @AH briefly discussed length of Fest, and I still maintain that changing the length would change the whole vibe. Right now, it's easy for those still working to join in. If the length were extended, it might be less exhausting and easier to go in depth, but then the already small pool of potential participants is shrunk further. A short time frame also makes it palatable for those that might not want to camp for an longer period.

I, too, noticed a different tone of conversations. ERE related topics were of course discussed, but there was less talking about ERE itself, or maybe less talking about the forum. Topics I overheard this year included slum-lording, weight lifting, cooking/baking, responsible investing, values, environmental fit, overcoming upbringing, healthcare coverage, van-living, and many more. There was no reading of the book and only one ERE confessional that I took part in, which was probably just a callback to last year anyhow. I wasn't asked to explain Kegan at all this year.

Speaking of Kegan, I took a stack of "forum" books to get rid of. It wasn't easy to part with them, but it felt good for them to find new homes. @Crusader took Fifth Discipline and Images of Organization, @dustBowl took Wilber's A Brief History of Everything, and @2birds1stone's partner took Radical Simplicity. Nobody wanted the Kegan book. Smart group.

One observation I made was that people naturally slotted themselves into preferred roles. So while I'm comfortable that everyone in attendance could have cooked a meal, led an interesting workshop, or happily done cleanup/labor, people volunteered for what they felt most comfortable with and left less preferred tasks to others. It seems nothing went undone. Maybe it wasn't completely self-organizing yet as @AH still seemed to shoulder a lot of responsibility as host, but it seems like there is a foundation there. For example, someone else should have been putting together the EREfest cookbook. Would you having to organize less increase your desire to do EREfest25 above 80%, @AH?

Ideas for tweaks next year:

• A bit more higher-level planning for the meals in terms of synergy between ingredients and methods for cooking for larger groups. This might look like cooking a dinner with the intent to generate leftovers for next day's lunch, coordinating types of ingredients so large batches of staples could be cooked up at the beginning of the weekend and then incorporated into multiple dishes.
• Delegate a meal coordinator role earlier to handle ^^ planning, and to offload that stress from me. Meal ownership came together only in the last week before fest and that stressed me out.

I think this role is best suited to a small group. It seemed like a bit much for one person in '23, but as noted, individuals just focusing on single meals had inefficiencies.

[dustBowl]

I am somewhat surprised by the lack of forum activity following fest compared to last year. Perhaps a result of so many returners and the event no longer being something so novel?

Yeah, I think this is part of it. I have less to say about Fest24 than I did about Fest23, not because I enjoyed it less, but because I would be repeating a lot of the same things I already said last year. Also there were just fewer people there this year, which translates to fewer people writing about it on the forum.

Ideas for tweaks next year:

• A bit more higher-level planning for the meals in terms of synergy between ingredients and methods for cooking for larger groups. This might look like cooking a dinner with the intent to generate leftovers for next day's lunch, coordinating types of ingredients so large batches of staples could be cooked up at the beginning of the weekend and then incorporated into multiple dishes.
• Delegate a meal coordinator role earlier to handle ^^ planning, and to offload that stress from me. Meal ownership came together only in the last week before fest and that stressed me out.

I was having pretty much these exact same thoughts RE the cooking setup. I can see lots of opportunities for efficiency improvements with only slightly more planning effort. I think having a little more meal coordination would also result in a greater variety of meals because you wouldn't get a scenario with e.g. one person making bean-based quesadillas and then the next person independently making bean-based tacos.

I'd be interested in taking that meal coordinator role, or being part of the group that does it next year. Of course, that's way far out in the future so let's see what happens

Hanging out with a bunch of ERE and ERE-adjacent people is a singular experience. I've never been around such a dense concentration of high quality people. The breadth of knowledge, skills, and experiences is great to be around.

Yeah, ERE people were great in 2023 and I'm happy to report they're still great in 2024

[AxelHeyst]

Maybe it wasn't completely self-organizing yet as @AH still seemed to shoulder a lot of responsibility as host, but it seems like there is a foundation there. For example, someone else should have been putting together the EREfest cookbook. Would you having to organize less increase your desire to do EREfest25 above 80%, @AH?

My desire to do EREfest25 has to do with the inscrutable exhortations of my soul, not my stress levels. That said, Fest has been the greatest motivation for me to get better at delegation, because it's very clear that the results for everyone are better the more I do it, and I have a better time being able to hang out and enjoy the event myself.

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I think this role is best suited to a small group. It seemed like a bit much for one person in '23, but as noted, individuals just focusing on single meals had inefficiencies.

I don't mean one person being the master chef like '23, I mean one person being the Food Coordinator: someone whose responsibility is setting the standard/expectation/structure ahead of time, and coordinating logistics between the people doing the actual work - those doing meal planning, acquiring ingredients, keeping track of the tally, cooking the actual meals, etc. To take a crack at defining it, the Food Coordinator's responsibility would be:

• Outlining what meals are to be covered (e.g. this year there were 10 people by Thursday night, and the next 'provided' meal I'd planned on was Friday night. People stepped up in the moment and everybody got fed, but that could have been planned better.)
• Soliciting and organizing volunteer chefs (who cooks when).
• Coordinating/masterminding the meal plan. I *don't* mean creating the menu for every meal, I mean coordinating the ideas the chefs come to the group with to optimize ingredient/equipment use.
• Any other creative initiative the coordinator wants to bring to the role. The mandate is make sure nobody goes hungry, with style points for actually applying systems thinking to the endeavor.

That role was me, technically, both years, and I'd love to see someone take it up and doubtlessly do a much better job than I did. Speaking of which...

I'd be interested in taking that meal coordinator role, or being part of the group that does it next year. Of course, that's way far out in the future so let's see what happens

:fistpump: You'd be awesome at it. I think the role should be one person. I've seen the effects of diffusion of responsibility too many times to casually let it happen on my watch.

[ffj]

Happy you had another successful get-together. The flow will get better with each successive year. Congrats.

[Crusader]

I think Axel described it pretty well. I had fun and it was great to hang out with non-conventional people into ERE. The one thing that would like to mention is that if/when this happens again in 2025, there are some weekends that would work better for me than others... in order of preference:

August 3rd, 2025
June 29th, 2025
August 31st, 2025
October 12th, 2025
October 26th, 2025

<FYI, May 30th - June 22nd, 2025... I am not available at all>

[AxelHeyst]

Heh, trust me, you do *not* want to be here in August or late June...

Mid October is interesting though, for a cooler vibe.

[Crusader]

I wasn't making any assumptions as to where the fest will be next year

[AxelHeyst]

This is how rumors start.