ad-hoc sessions

 ad-hoc sessions  is the idea (which needs a better name) that we host single topic sessions every month or two online that the community can gather around and discuss.

Future Topics
Add a suggested topic below or +1 an existing topic. When there seems to be a topic with a decent amount of interest we can plan an ad-hoc session.


 * Discovery
 * +1
 * +1
 * +1
 * Vouch
 * (specifically around Generating Vouches)
 * Add your topic idea here...

How to plan a session

 * The general idea for the best time for these sessions are Saturday afternoon/evening UTC.
 * Session must be announced more than a week before it's supposed to take place.
 * More specifically, it has to be in the newsletter that goes out (on Fridays) the week before the announced session.

Past Topics
This section is for us to list past topics from ad-hoc sessions in reverse chronological order, with the goal of preventing several on the same topic (unless really needed) in a short time-window.


 * Put first ad-hoc topic here after it's happened (with the date that it happened)

Criticism / Debate

 * It has been suggested in the chat that Ad-hoc sessions just be vHWC meetings with topics voted on.
 * There are a couple issues with this approach:
 * vHWC typically is on Wednesdays and is good for a single Timezone. Ad-Hoc sessions would have a goal of being a good day/time for all Timezones which probably leads toward the weekends.
 * The audience might be different, a vHWC might be a helpful place for newcomers to attend. Newcomers would be welcome to ad-hoc sessions, but it might not be the easiest place for a person to dive in. By putting this content into vHWC we might make vHWCs less welcome to new people by virtue of content.
 * Avoiding the potential time conflict of people attending local HWCs (which we want to encourage) and a vHWC that is focused on a specific topic like ad-hoc sessions might cause a person to have to decide between participating in the online conversation on a topic that is important to them versus attending an in-person meeting.
 * Frequency: vHWCs are expected to happen every two weeks to once a month. Ad-hoc sessions would likely happen more once a month at the quickest and very likely be more spaced out like once every other month or once a quarter, depending on how many topics people want to discuss. This would cause vHWCs to switch awkwardly between topic focused and casual conversation focus and blur the lines of the purposes of the meeting.

Original concept
During IndieWebCamp Online 2019 it was brainstormed that we should hold individual sessions that don't require as much overhead and preparation time but gets the benefit that was achieved in the Sessions of the camp. Some of the key concepts from chat that were discussed are archived below:


 * https://chat.indieweb.org/meta/2019-03-09#t1552161573431700
 * "Given how the Online Camp is going, it wouldn't be a horrible idea to have an etherpad of general camp-esque topics that people are interested in and doing occasional online sessions for just them when they reach some sort of critical mass." @chrisaldrich March 9, 2019
 * https://chat.indieweb.org/meta/2019-03-09#t1552162279708600
 * "I like the idea of topic mini camps." @[Rose] March 9, 2019
 * https://chat.indieweb.org/meta/2019-03-09#t1552166471416100
 * "the ad-hoc sessions thing is also someting I thought of today, with someone proposing a "session" for the near future" @sknebel March 9, 2019
 * https://chat.indieweb.org/meta/2019-03-09#t1552166519216700
 * "not sure how much people actually use the newsletter to discover events, but maybe adding it to the newsletter the week before is a useful form (fridays newsletter for saturday is probably a bit short notice)" @sknebel March 9, 2019
 * https://chat.indieweb.org/meta/2019-03-10#t1552250219265300
 * "I'd go for "announce it before the newsletter friday for the weekend of the next week, sometime saturday afternoon/evening UTC" - but of course, if someone prefers something else and does it then, that's fine too. doing something wins over talking about when to do it :D" @sknebel March 10, 2019