Why should we care about Welcome To My Garden being an open source initiative and how important are the commons for the slow travel community? Here’s your chance to get more insights on these questions!

During this last session of our slow travel mini festival, we are going to rethink the relationship between the slow travellers community and the commons. While being on a slow travel journey, many of us heavily rely, help maintain and benefit from natural and cultural resources such as clean air, water, nature, bivouac spots, freely accessible knowledge with Wikipedia as the best example, which are often help by groups of people or communities held in common, not owned privately. What can we as a community do to make slow travelling more inclusive and, yet, make sure that everyone takes care of our natural and cultural resources?

What role can the Welcome To My Garden community play in making basic principles like respect for nature, respectful use of bivouacs and leave no trace the guiding principles for all slow travellers? Let’s talk about the slow travelling and the commons!

On Tuesday 29 June, Welcome To My Garden and Commons Lab are organising a panel discussion on the role of the slow travel community with regards to the commons. This event aims to gather all kinds of slow travellers and is absolutely open to everyone who wants to learn more about it.

Programme for this session:

• A brief introduction to the commons
• The different kinds of commons in practice: examples
• The opportunities and pitfalls of a commons-led approach
• Why Welcome To My Garden is an open source initiative: an example of the digital commons
• Staying overnight in nature: how it works in Denmark (to be confirmed)
• Panel discussion with Q&A

About this workshop:

This event is part of our slow travel mini festival, a series of 8 workshops to prepare your slow travels with the community. The festival is organized by volunteers of Welcome To My Garden. All workshops take place online.

Any specific questions or suggestions? Or want to talk about your ideas or initiatives? That's fantastic! Just drop us a message at team@welcometomygarden.org.

This workshop is organized in English.

***FAQ¨***

What is our slow travel mini festival about?

The slow travel mini festival is a series of inspirational and practical workshops organized for and with the Welcome To My Garden community. With Welcome To My Garden we’re on a mission to make slow travelling the new normal. We want to empower you to start your slow travel journey: get inspired by others and plan your route. On top of that, we will also show you how you can help improve maps and rethink the public space. And, last but not least, this festival is also a fantastic opportunity to get the Welcome To My Garden community together!

Who is organizing this?

The slow travel mini festival is organized for and with the Welcome To My Garden community.

Why are you asked for a workshop ticket?

First of all, we want to make sure to cover all organisational costs of our festival. All remaining budget and donations will be used for technical improvements of Welcome To My Garden. Although using Welcome To My Garden is free to use and will remain free, the technological infrastructure isn’t. In the next few months, we really want to prepare the next steps and improve the Welcome To My Garden platform.

As we did from the beginning, we strive for transparent and open finances. You can check out the WTMG budget and expenses on https://opencollective.com/welcometomygarden.

Where will the remaining budget and donations be used for?

• Monthly cost for platform maintenance: keeping Welcome To My Garden online costs €175 per month (during the summer time with a lot of users).

• Developing a search function on the map, so that you don’t need to keep on searching endlessly on the map.

• Developing filters to identify gardens with specific facilities.

• Center IP address on the map (the map will be centered on your location).

• Add a report button, in case there’s a traveller or a host not respecting the rules.

• Develop our back-end infrastructure. In short, the back-end is the technical infrastructure that allows us to store our database. We currently use a closed commercial service and the time has come to build our own infrastructure. Open Source is at the core of Welcome To My Garden and this will allow us to welcome more contributors!

Our finances are open and transparent on https://opencollective.com/welcometomygarden.

What if you really want to attend the workshop, but you can’t pay the event contribution fee?

The mini festival is an event that anyone can join. That’s why we also offer free solidarity tickets. Our free solidarity tickets aim to give individuals with little or no financial resources the possibility to attend the workshops for free. These tickets are reserved for students and unemployed travellers. If there are no more solidarity tickets available, you can sign up for the waiting list.

Click here to apply for a free solidarity ticket.

I’m not a user of Welcome To My Garden - can I participate?

Of course! This festival is for both beginners and experienced slow travellers. You don’t need to have a Welcome To My Garden account to participate. Everyone is welcome!

What do I need for the workshop?

You need to have wifi and, if possible, a computer (except for the 1001 ways of slow travelling & the commons workshop where you could use a smartphone to access the talk).

One ticket = one family is okay!

If you’re a family or a group of friends under the same roof, you only need to get a ticket. Think about making a donation if you want to support Welcome To My Garden. ;)

Do you love our slow travel mini festival and want to partner up?

Shoot us an email at team@welcometomygarden.org ;)