Day 89: Oxford BiFest 2010 - We Did It!!

[anarchist_nomad]

What an incredibly awesometacular weekend! It was truly fantastic -- in some ways that were expected, and in other that were very much unforeseen!

First and foremost, of course, was Oxford BiFest... which I count as an amazing success! Working with such a great organising team, and set in such a wonderful venue, I can hardly say that I am surprised! Nonetheless, watching one's work materialise into Something Good is always a spectacular feeling. After watching and listening to the people who attended, I do believe that what we made happen was very much a Good Thing. Hooray!

There is much more to say about the weekend... and it shall be said! But it shall be said in a later post. Likewise, responses to the lovely LJ entries that I have seen from some of the lovely people who came along will also happen... soon. Today, I need to focus on being an uber-scientist. There are some very busy days ahead, as this week holds several deadlines. It is not time to rest yet.

Meanwhile, let me just say "thank you", once again, to everyone who came out to play this weekend! It was great to see y'all again or -- in some cases -- to meet you![*]

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[*] Particularly my excellent new friend, just_becky.

Comments

[anarchist-nomad.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks! It really was boatloads of fun[*] and I'm sorry that you were not able to make it! But... the good news is that we had a large enough turnout -- eighty-three people -- to ensure that there will be an Oxford BiFest 2011! Wahoo!

So whatever they say about life not giving second chances? Forget it! ;-D

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[*] Not quite sure how much fun one can load into a boat, but...

[(Anonymous)]

Crikey 83 people thats a great turnout, congratulations. Just wondering, if the outreach was successful in attracting people who had not been to a bi related event or group before ?

Laurence

[anarchist-nomad.livejournal.com]

That's a good question -- thanks for asking it!

Judging roughly, by eye, I would say that about half the people there were newcomers and half had been to a BiFest or a BiCon before. So I think that is a reasonable success for our outreach efforts.

We had prepared simple feedback forms for attendees to fill out. About half of them did so. Looking at them, it seems that our multi-pronged outreach did work. Some people heard about us through BCN or the BiCon LiveJournal community, of course... but others found out from notices posted in libraries or the fliers that we distributed. This is very encouraging!

[(Anonymous)]

Crikey, award yourself extra gold stars, thats really encouraging, and definitely something other bi events including bicon, should consider developing a way to monitor, maybe a simple ask on the registration desk could do the trick.

Laurence

[anarchist-nomad.livejournal.com]

*grins* Brokie-dokie -- gold stars awarded, as you instructed! :-D

Seriously, though, one of our explicit aims in developing Oxford BiFest was to do outreach to new people. So in addition to the tried and true means of advertising to the existing UK bisexual community (e.g., BCN, the BiCon LJ com), we met with local and semi-local LGBT groups, we put notices up in one dozen Oxfordshire libraries, we advertised on local community sites like Oxford Gumtree (http://oxford.gumtree.com/) and the Oxford Daily Info (http://www.dailyinfo.co.uk/). You get the idea. I am happy to report that these efforts appear to have been a success.

As far as the monitoring goes, we had a very simple feedback form at the event. We deliberately kept it short so that people would fill it out -- about half of the attendees did so. One of the few questions that we asked was whether an attendee had been to a BiFest or BiCon event before... to which about half said "no". One of the other questions we asked was whether the attendee would go to similar events in the future -- thus giving us a means of determining how effective Oxford BiFest was at bringing new people into the support of the existing community.

Cheers,
Nomad