Official meet stress: a suggestion - views welcome.

[Simon]

I believe that decision making, general faffing and stress are issues that are coming to a head with official meets. I'm willing to make a friendly suggestion to the team, and I'd be very welcoming of any views on the subject. Perhaps this could be a thread for an open discussion about it?

Please be aware when reading this that my views on any "types" described here is entirely neutral. If you perceive any kind of 'digging' in the language I'm using, please believe me when I say it was not intentional.

Let's face it: official meets are a victim of their own success. There are regularly 40+ people turning up; each meet always brings newbies, oldies coming back and part-timers. Cliques are forming: people are finding their groove with their own sets.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing, especially as, no matter what, everyone seems to want be part of the great feeling you get going round a place like Alton with a huge group of like-minded souls.

But something has to give. Decision-making within such a huge group of people is nigh-on impossible without a "leader" to do it. The problem is, the idea of a "leader" of the group is welcome to some but not to others. Again, neither of these positions is worse than the other: some like to be in a position where they can follow others and just relax and get on with the day, but there are others who like to be more proactive and get people moving in particular directions. If you have more than one of these people though, the result is ultimately conflict. In TTF terms, this usually ends in a passive-agressive stalemate, and the result is group paralysis: the familiar long periods of standing around while literally nothing is decided. Stress results.

This leads to one of two things happening, gradual, painstaking consensus swinging behind one idea, or a group with another idea getting so stressy and peed off that they go their own way. People in group left behind feel aggrieved at the schism, stress continues.

I can see both sides of the argument. For myself, I am really quite relaxed about the idea of the group breaking up and doing what they want to do. I'd hate for anyone to think I am being a prissy queen for striking out with a small group, but I understand that for some, keeping the group together is important. This is why I think my suggestion could work.

So what's the big idea?

In simple terms, an itinerary - but not one that (I think) requires much organisation or management at all, or indeed straight-jackets official meets unduly.

Basically, what about having, say, 3/4 times throughout the day when the group will definitely meet together and do a ride or two at specified locations?

So, example: meet at 10:00 for first ride (for e.g Oblivion) in X-Sector.
Another meeting point at 13:00 in Valley for Nemesis and Air followed by Lunch - do your own thing
Meet then at 14:30 for post-lunch Rapids and RMT.
Meet at 16:00 for final rides and goodbyes.

As I see it, after doing a couple of rides together, certain groups are free to do their own thing if they want to, knowing that they will come back together at a later point. I'm sure the result will be that there is a main core of the group who still go around together, but smaller groups needn't feel like they have to if they've got other priorities or rides they don't like. For the one's who like to be in the huge group, they know that they'll get that experience as well throughout the day.

I think this could work. Again, for myself, it's not so much the fact of the faffing around or splinter cliques or whatever that bothers me in the slightest: these things are an inevitable part of being at a meet with such a diverse group of individuals: it's the stress that results that's annoying: people shouldn't be falling out over such things.

[Ritadz]

I just go whore Nemmy SRQ at meets tbh. But I see what you mean and I'm quite a pro active person, although I'm also quite a social person so I don't mind standing around talking, but I'd rather be doing rides, hence the numerous times at Summer Spec I just went whoring for a bit. And 21 rides on Saturday and 9 on Sunday ain't bad. :P

[Big Dave]

Meets normally work fine. Its only when we have a huge meet followed by people arriving in different areas at different times. Saturday at scarefest was ok, but today was a problem due to people being all over the place at different times and therefore not knowing what the others are doing.

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[Islander]

I think that as much as Simon's idea sounds great, part of the problem is actually getting people to meet at a specified time at all, say after lunch. The group can agree to meet at a ride at, say, 2pm, but some will arrive early and ride anyway, others will arrive on time and be compelled to wait for those who are a good 20m late... it just doesn't seem to work sometimes (by no means every time).

I think having 3-4 meet-up times during the day is, theoretically, a great idea, but given the problems we can have with just one, I don't know how well it'd work.

I personally don't see the issue with the group splintering into smaller sub-groups, but having said that I'm not going to splinter into a 1-person group (the entire point of TTF meets, to me, is to be with friends), and so when some are waiting for others, there are problems.

[MattH]

I noticed on Saturday at one stage that this really shone with some people waiting for 13 while all the rest went to Rapids, there was a large group heading for rapids, a slightly smaller group at Thirteen, and an even smaller group that were following the rapids lot, but were trailing behind, i was part of the latter group, and within the 5 of us, i have to say, we were not impressed at the major mix up, as most of us that were stranded only heard of people heading for rapids, and had no idea of people being at thirteen until Kelpie got a phonecall off Diogo, who was waiting, but mainly, we have to realise there is no way during numbers as large as Scarefest that people are going to stay in one area, between the 5 of us, we made a little idea between us that had already been mentioned, have 2-3 smaller groups, and have a meeting point during the day for those that want to switch groups and make sure everyone is ok, possibly moderated by an older member of the Forum or a Team member.

[DiogoJ42]

Good topic. :yes:

Part of the trouble seems to stem from the fact that there are three types on TTF member:
* Those who live locally and visit the park on a near weekly basis. These are the people who are happy to stand around for twenty minutes going "Oooh, look! a new paving slab!"
*People who rarely get to go to the park. (IE: Kelpie). These people primarily want to go on rides, since they only get to be there a couple of times a year. After all, The rides are the reason we go there.
*People who often attend meets but do not visit any other time. (Such as myself). The hardest catagory to please, because I want to ride whore, and do my chatting at the same time.

I think the only practical solution is for people to splinter into smaller groups... as we ended up doing today. It's just not possible to socialise with such a large number of people at once.

[DanB]

I agree that it can get messy when numbers are big at meets but I don't really see a workable solution. We all need to accept that we have to split up into smaller groups if people want to go on different rides.

[Bear]

Up until 3pm on Saturday, I only got in 4 rides (there were long queues, but none longer than 40-50mins) and Dar only got in TOTT and Rapids. I read somewhere else on here that someone only got 7 rides in all weekend! If you want to get around everything at least once, you can't expect to be able to stay in a big group all the time.

Once we split from everyone on Sunday morning, we did everything (including re-rides) in less than 2 hours, meaning from 1pm onwards we spent the whole day with TTF. Surely this is better than getting in an extra 2 hours with everyone but only managing a ride count which could be considered pathetic even by school summer holiday standards?

Again, the only real way forward is to do the park in groups of 8-10 people. Most people are in groups all day anyway, but it might be an idea to pre-arrange groups when newbies are involved. You could integrate a number of new folk into each pre-existing group to allow them to get used how meets work, and also to make it easier for new people who are shy and wouldn't socialise very well amongst 50+ mental people (you really are).

[Magrathea]

It's an interesting idea, and certainly a valid concern given the recent weekend; what interests me, however, is that in March, with a group of nearly double the size of the weekend's, there was nowhere NEAR the amount of waiting around for people and general faffing as there was at Scarefest this year, and that's not really something I can think of an explanation for...

That said, I don't come to TTF meets expecting to ride anything, I come to spend a weekend with a group of people who I love being with in a place which I love being at. Thus, I really don't mind standing around somewhere for half an hour if it allows for a nice chat and a good laugh. However, I know that others in this time would rather be off riding Nemmy 32 times in a row, or other such things, which is also fine, but is obviously very much an individual/clique thing, as the whole group couldn't be expected to wait and watch people running round and round a queueline.

I think there's certainly a potential for a plan like Simon's, my only concerns are that firstly, I'm not the biggest fan of the group splitting up (other than at lunch) for too long periods of time, as I feel like having multiple groups to start with, and trying to coordinate all of them, is for me the biggest cause of stress on meets, as even with an itinerary like that, one group would decide they could afford to fit in an extra ride on something, or would lose track of time, and once again there's a lot of stress for those waiting around.

I'm really not sure...

[Jordan]

I fit into the former category which Diogo mentioned, but even I have to agree that there was much more faff than necessary this weekend.

If anything, though, I would put it down to poor communication between groups, than to any larger motive. For example, a lot of the waiting around was due to waiting for people to meet back up, or trying to get hold of people to arrange something. This was the case largely in part on Saturday for costume changing, as people in one group seemed to disappear back to the hotels without letting the other group know, and after we couldn't contact any of the other group, it was based on guesswork that we figured people had gone to get changed, hence we should've already gone too.

I think Saturday can be written-off for two reasons - for one, as many were off park for at least 2-3 hours in the afternoon, that has an opportunity cost of losing 3 hours of ride time, and two, because the day was very busy, queues were at times much longer than the average this year, so we either decided not to ride, or spent 45 minutes in a queue.

The other thing which I found surprising over the weekend was just how easily the group managed to be split up solely over the course of walking from, say, Spinball to X-Sector. By the time we had reached Oblivion, we had a small fraction of the group left, and weren't really sure whether the rest were still on their way, or decided to do something else. Cue long waits and little ride time.

Simon, I like your idea, but I'm not sure where it would really fit in. I'd be hesitant to appear to encourage the main group to split off much more whenever there's a slight disagreement about which rides to do. From being on meets a lot this year, there seems to be a good give/take attitude in the group, where people don't mind doing a ride knowing that they'll get to do another later on. There's also the latter category which Diogo mentioned, who often have split off on meets this year, and it usually has worked out well. If the main group was more fragmented, it could start to become more cliquey and I really don't want to see politics arise in the heart of the meets.

Now, if people could communicate better (by text/facebook etc) about when people are meeting up/what they are doing, then this problem wouldn't be so bad, as it'd be easier to get hold of late groups and easier to co-ordinate plans for lunch, to name but a few. However, there are several hurdles here too, because people don't always have their phone on, and the signal at Towers can be so bad at times that text messages take long to be received, and calls sometimes don't even reach the other person's phone. An itinerary planned in advance is little use if people don't turn up on time, but are unable to get in touch with others to let them know.

On the whole, though, TTF meets seem to be a delicate balance, where most of the time we manage to get around the whole park and some more, and the couple of people who want to whore Nemesis (and they have every right to!) can split off and rejoin later on. I'd be very reluctant to start changing things just yet, and i'd wait and see until at least the start of next season to see if problems are prevailing. After all, it could just be that people don't have as much interest in the rides as they did at the start of the season.

[Mike]

I think Jordan sums up the issue perfectly

I think that communication is the main problem here - in such a large group, it does cause problems if people just break off without letting others know, as naturally, we'll wait for them otherwise, as happened at points on Saturday especially (it wasn't quite as bad yesterday due to people arriving on park from the hotels/Vane/Astro Towers etc at different times anyway, and thus people remained in their mini groups loosely based around who was staying with them for much of the day, rejoining as a big group mid-afternoon).

My personal view is that the whole issue would be resolved if people just let someone in the large group know if they are breaking off, and if necessary get the number of that person so that they can rejoin later on. That wasn't happening on Saturday, especially when people decided to go back to Splash and change (I think I was guilty of this myself, as I was in the first couple of people to break off from the group for this purpose ) and when it was attempted, at times people were uncontactable (although this I acknowledge as a tad tricky to solve until Towers sort out their phone mast - in particular, calling from the hotels to the park and vice versa seemed to be particularly unreliable!)

I don't think a fixed timetable of any sort is the solution really, as I quite like the way TTF just 'flow' around the park, and I haven't experienced the problem on other meets this year

[DiogoJ42]

The only problem with letting someone in the "main group" know that you are splitting, is that half the time you have no idea who is in what group A few times I tried to phone people, only to find out that they too had split off from the hoard, and were just as clueless as I was!

[Dylan]

I haven't been on any of the larger meets this year until Saturday, but there did seem to be an issue. I put this down to it purely being the Scarefest meet more than anything else though. With the park open later, people staying in various locations, people getting changed in various locations etc.

Echoing what Diogo mentioned above, with such a large group there are going to be the very regular visitors who are happy to amble around in a relaxed fashion without feeling the need to ride ride ride, to the occasional visitor who really wants to make the most out of their day. It's never going to work for both of people to stick together all day.
I was happy to relax and spend time with people on Saturday without riding, so the general faffing and waiting around didn't really bother me too much, but I appreciate that it took up a LOT of time. Time that was wasted to an extent.

I think the key thing is that people accept there are going to be splits during the day and not to get upset about it. The 'FAFF' seems to create huge amounts of tension. It's in everyone's meet lowlights, so it's probably good that this thread has come about to guage people's ideas.
Maybe like Simon said, have a morning meet up, and an after lunch meet up. Anyone who wants to split after either can do so, but at the risk of not being together as a whole group for the rest of the day.

During most meet up's everyone is generally staying at the same place, so it's not such an issue. People can all meet up later anyway.

[Nightfall]

I think the only issue that needs solving is communicating between groups when we are going to merge again.

For someone who’s quite new to meets (like me) I wanted to be both part of a larger group but also split into different smaller groups to get to talk to some of the members I didn't know as well, wanted to talk to or were heading for a ride I liked. This was part of what made the meet special. The only issue then came when the group wanted to re-join with the main group and we either couldn’t get any reply or received mixed messages about how long a queue would be.

[Satch]

I'm going to make a longer post later when I have more time, but I think people may be misinterpreting Simons suggestion. It's not to suggest organising separate groups, but to acknowledge that people should feel free to split into groups if they want to.

There was a combined problem of miscommunication and conflicting interests this weekend, and that's what caused the tension. Too often groups would spend a long time waiting to meet others off a ride, ask what the plan is following that, and then not being happy as they had already done that when split from the group.

I've been coming to meetups since 2005 and there has never been as many issues as there were this weekend, and there were typically several groups wandering around meeting up occasionally for Tavern drinks or lunch somewhere. There were no hang ups about spending hours trying to coordinate groups together

[Jordan]

[quote=""Satch""]I'm going to make a longer post later when I have more time, but I think people may be misinterpreting Simons suggestion. It's not to suggest organising separate groups, but to acknowledge that people should feel free to split into groups if they want to.[/quote]

I understand that completely, that's what I interpreted Simon's suggestion as.

However, as someone from the "come for the sosche" point of view, I think that the more the main group fragments on a meet, the less I enjoy a meet. Granted, like I said before, I can completely understand and don't mind that some people want to split off and get rides done, but so far it remains a bit of a minority which do that. If you make it much more suggested that people should split up for the majority of the day, then people will be more willing to go and split off and do rides just for slight differences in preference of rides over what the main group want to do, which negates the sort of give and take culture we have at the moment. Not only that, but having more groups as a result of this would make it much harder to co-ordinate between people, because more groups means more people having done different rides, hence when it comes to meeting up again, it's a bit of a mixed bag as to which rides to do to suit everyone.

I think of the best official meets having a bit of a 50/50 split between rides and people. At the start of the year, we were in quite a good balance between the two. Over the weekend, with the amount of faff and other things happening, the balance was pushed much more in the direction of people, but if you encourage people to split off, I think it would swing wildly in the opposite direction. I think if things are left alone, by next season it should be back to normal like it was this February & March.

Simon, I really do appreciate your idea, but I'm struggling to see how the benefits of having potentially more rides would outweigh the problems of trying to coordinate between multiple groups spread around park, and the overall sort of impersonal feel that having a corporate itinerary, however loose, gives to a meet. If, come next season, official meets have grown even larger and faff is much more prevalent, this should be looked at, but I'd be very reluctant to act so soon to a problem which, up until this weekend, hasn't been so much of an issue this year.

[Islander]

[quote=""Jordan""]I understand that completely, that's what I interpreted Simon's suggestion as.

...

If you make it much more suggested that people should split up for the majority of the day[/quote]
I think you're contradicting yourself here - Simon is not suggesting that split-ups are encouraged, but simply allowed.

The problem is that currently a few people are happy to split into smaller groups (if they so wish), but some members object greatly to this, which doesn't really strike me as fair.

Members shouldn't be encouraged to split into smaller groups, but rather if they want to, they shouldn't feel disallowed to.

[Chris W]

How about a website which allows you to update were you are in the park? People can then use this to know were the groups are.
It's just an initial idea that some of us here in Florida discussed last night, whilst some people went to go on rides. (even with a group of 6 it's very easy to split up, it can work just as easily with a larger group!)

For example:

Chris @ 15:54 - Going on Nemesis.
Joel @ 15:58 - Going on Thirteen.
Chris @ 16:10 - Been on Nemesis, now heading with main group to Air.
Joel @ 16:15 - @Chris, meet you at the Air exit in 15 minutes.

----

I don't see an issue with any of the meets, but I wasn't there this weekend.

[Islander]

^Interesting idea, but surely that relies on us having good mobile internet? For those of us with little-to-no mobile signal in park (which is a fair few of us), it'd be an issue...

(not to mention that there are *shock horror* some members without a phone that could easily connect to the internet...)

[DiogoJ42]

True, but there is usually at least one member in each group who has a decent phone.

What we really need, is for each member to have a GPS tracker on them, as well as a HUD monicle that displays a map of the park with all the others on it