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On 7 July 2012, in an event that will eclipse both the Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee :), London will be hosting WORLDPRIDE!!

http://www.pridelondon.org/worldpride

At this event will be the BIGGEST and BEST ever group of asexy representatives!

We have exactly one year to make this happen.

I really really hope we can get international visitors. But this will obviously need a lot of work and planning. Plus I hope we can get an EVEN BETTER turnout from our UK people than last time. I want people to come who don't normally go to meetups, and who would generally never dream of going to this type of thing. This is the big one. And we really have to make ourselves heard.

***

I'm aware of course that, massive though this is, I'm starting the thread a little early, and realistically, no I'm not going to be able to work on this for the whole year. There will be lulls. But I thought there was some symbolic value in starting exactly one year before the big day.

At the moment I'm doing two things. Making an interested list, and making a TODO list. It occurs to me there are so many things to organize we'll need different threads. But first let's work out what needs to be done, and go about it in a hopefully organized fashion.

Here is the first version of my list.

(1) Advertising and recruitment.

(2) Visibility materials (placards, flyers, banner, balloons, flags, dress).

(3) March day logistics (where we're meeting, what our plan is etc.)

(4) Post-march events (e.g. a stall).

(5) Provisions for international visitors. Possible shared accommodation? Possible events in the days surrounding the march? (e.g. maybe another meetup elsewhere, maybe a BBQ and/or maybe a conference, like they have in SF).

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My list thus far reads:

~ Professional banner

~ Professional leaflets

~ Professional everything

~ Lots of people

~ Alternative languages booklets? ~ Both English-speaking AVEN and other relevant other country AVEN URLs

~ If non-Brit Aces, other nationality emblems to show International Ace community

~ More personalised stuff, like pens, pencils, funny bookmarks

And for the love of cake, someone remind me to get a backpack not a shoulder bag...

Since we'll have to get a professional banner done, maybe we could have a design competition?

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RandomDent

As it will be a year from now, I'm hoping to have some kind of house-share thing going on, so it's possible for a couple of people to stay with me/us depending on room. So that should save a few pennies on hotels. Not sure how close to London I will be. Probably just outside it.

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Cleander - thank you; that'd be helpful!

RD - great idea. We should get as many people to offer house sharing as possible.

I see Bris has advertized the thing via Tumblr.

http://nethdugan.tumblr.com/post/7190913196/world-pride-2012

This is a great idea. But it will need follow-up. What I suggest we do is get people to register their interest and then send them regular updates. Perhaps every 2 months at first, and then every month from the start of 2012.

However before we do this we need to have a much better idea of what we're doing apart from the march. If we're going to make this a world meet up people will want to do other stuff too. I think an asexy conference is a good idea (in the style DJ et al hold in SF before the march). Maybe on the Sunday we could hold a more traditional meetup activity too.

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I'll be going, for sure. I'd love it if I could arrive on the Friday and leave on the Sunday if anybody would let me sleep on their sofa. But if not I can do what I usually do and just miss all the after-parade stuff.

  • I think we can't have any hand written placards. Stuff that we print out and stick on if done well is fine but best of all would be things made by the pros.
  • We need more condoms. A few thousand of them, I think. Buying them in bulk will help, there's probably a place you can buy a ton cheaply that shops use.
  • Leaflets. For things we hand out with condoms the printed onto A4 and then cut would be fine. But for anything on stalls we need something made by people who have experience designing leaflets and printed by a pro printer. For things we hand out during the parade - if anybody has a good quality printer that can use good paper then we could probably get away printing on there but again, it'd need to be designed well. And as great as they can look, not something that looks like it was made on word or paint and good typography.
  • Banner. I love the one Jic made but if it's going to be a world wide thing, something look more pro made, with the letters printed on, would be best. The SF AVENites have one that fits and maybe they'd let us borrow it rather than buying a new one? If we make sure it's signed mail and first class it should get here in time.
  • Places to stay. Those coming from abroad or high up in Scotland etc get first priority. But for those who live in or near London - if they'd be willing to give up their couches or floor spaces for air beds and or something. Or a bunk if they've a spare bunk in a bunkbed or something. Even if they aren't going to be in the parade itself, or are friends/family who're willing to help out in regards to that.
  • Money. Buying all the condoms, leaflets, placards, anything else will cost money. If we could help out with travel costs from our poorer members from abroad that'd be great but that may be more than we can raise.
  • So, if we can do the fund raising for money that'd be good. Be it cake sales of some sort or more online stuff like 'I will write things/draw things/make graphicy things/play musical instrument/make a fool of myself/something for a donation to THIS' and so on. I think it's important to do this, even if it doesn't cover everything.
  • Languages. It'd be really neat if we could have placards in multiple languages. Maybe even all saying the same thing in different languages (and we could design them in such a way that it's obvious they're a set).
  • Publicity. Michael, I think you should get a tumblr. Also, if we can advertise this on the non-English AVENs that'd be good too.

I take it this isn't getting a forum of it's own? Because we could probably use that.

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Good ideas.

[*] Banner. I love the one Jic made but if it's going to be a world wide thing, something look more pro made, with the letters printed on, would be best. The SF AVENites have one that fits and maybe they'd let us borrow it rather than buying a new one? If we make sure it's signed mail and first class it should get here in time.

SF Pride is 2 weeks ahead of London in 2012, so yeah this could work. Or perhaps someone will go to both and bring it themselves. It's conceivable I might visit SF next year.

[*] Money. Buying all the condoms, leaflets, placards, anything else will cost money. If we could help out with travel costs from our poorer members from abroad that'd be great but that may be more than we can raise.

[*] So, if we can do the fund raising for money that'd be good. Be it cake sales of some sort or more online stuff like 'I will write things/draw things/make graphicy things/play musical instrument/make a fool of myself/something for a donation to THIS' and so on. I think it's important to do this, even if it doesn't cover everything.

I think it'd be best if we don't do fund-raising in any kind of organized way, because the idea makes me a little nervous and I think there may be legal issues with that too. It'd probably best if we all just pay for what we can and bring that along. Or help people out individually, where and when possible.

Maybe a better idea would be to keep a running list of everything we need. People can post when they've bought these, and they can then bring it themselves (or pass to someone else to bring).

Regarding condoms, it seems we can buy them in bulk even more economically than I did here.

http://www.undercovercondoms.com/bulk_pricing.asp

[*] Publicity. Michael, I think you should get a tumblr. Also, if we can advertise this on the non-English AVENs that'd be good too.

Yes, I will get a tumblr at some point.

What I really want at the moment is a clearer plan of what we're doing apart from the march. I think it's important to have this before we make a big recruitment push.

I take it this isn't getting a forum of it's own? Because we could probably use that.

I have not asked yet. I'd like to get a few more ideas first and have a better idea of what we're doing, so that I can justify making the case for an extra sub-forum. It's bound to generate opposition anyway, from the anti-LGBT-inclusion people, so I want to make sure we have a good case first.

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carried in bags

I often the the pink Union Jack knocking around LGBT events, maybe we could have one in purple (not just the union jack of corse). The difficulty would be making them.

1LFPinkJack.jpg

I was handing out star stickers at London Pride, they were simple enough and went down very well. If we could get some colourful little "A" stickers this time. Stickers of letters of the alphabet are easily enough to get hold of, I don't know how easy it would be just for purple "A"s?

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Oooo, bulk condoms! And one of the options is rainbow condoms *snickers*

Also, what about 'female' condoms and dental dams? Will probably need less of them, but if we can it'd be good to cover a few areas of safe sex gear. Though, they cost more (which really isn't fair).

Well, I'm not sure how it'd be illegal to do the fund raising thing. It gets tricky if you try and set up an actual business or charity but as that isn't what we'd be going for....

A purple Union Flag would be neat, and though some other flags would still be recognisable in a monochrome scheme a lot wouldn't be. You could do it for ours, the US, India, Australia and NZ (though, you couldn't tell them apart), Jamaica, South Africa, Greenland.... but most countries not.

A trouble we're going to face is that getting some of these made, will be more expensive as we'll only need a couple of each rather than several of one. Same for the placards if we get them all pro printed.

Leaflets, well, you get to a certain point and you can get a few thousand for an extra twenty quid.

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Oooo, bulk condoms! And one of the options is rainbow condoms *snickers*

Also, what about 'female' condoms and dental dams? Will probably need less of them, but if we can it'd be good to cover a few areas of safe sex gear. Though, they cost more (which really isn't fair).

Yes absolutely. Especially given the "audience": male condoms are not exactly much good to lesbian couples, and there will obviously be a lot of those around.

In fact that already happened several times last Saturday.

The condoms thing was pretty hilarious overall. I got the feeling that many in our group - including myself - had never handled or even seen the things before!

Well, I'm not sure how it'd be illegal to do the fund raising thing. It gets tricky if you try and set up an actual business or charity but as that isn't what we'd be going for....

I don't think it'd be illegal. It just may create unwanted issues.

And the entire idea makes me a little uncomfortable. The minute you start taking people's money, that gives people a claim over you. I'd prefer not to be told "as a contributor, I demand that...", and to be able to stay autonomous.

And then there's the whole "why should I be giving money to privileged Western kids when I could be helping starving children in Africa" thing - with a lot of justification I think.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for people contributing. I just think it'd be better if people bought the goods themselves and brought them along. Or, in certain cases, bought things by pooling money in small groups. But an open invitation to donate money seems like asking for trouble.

And yeah. The key to keeping down expenses will be ordering bulk. That's why planning everything carefully first is so important - so that we can get it right.

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certianly would seem the summer of 2012 London is the place to be

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While getting the SF banner would be easy enough by the sounds, we'd have to send it back again, and if we had our own we could use it again for other UK Pride events rather than going back to Jic's one (sorry Jic lol)

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I think we should consider having matching t-shirts like some of the other groups at Pride.

I suggest purple (of course!) with "AVEN" and "asexuality.org" in bold white lettering on the back.

What goes on the front is even more open to suggestions/debate.

I think the triangular sexuality diagram as featured on the balloons would be effective...

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While uniform shirts are a nice idea to look neat, personally I think they would be rather boring because they are usually fairly plain affairs. One thing that was nice about Pride was that people came, although broadly in ace colours, in different styles and colours. Personally I rather liked the shirt I wore because it had all the ace colours and was interesting looking. If we did all have the same shirt, I think I'd want them to be more complicated than is maybe possible to do at a professional t-shirt printers. Some of the people in our group looked like they'd made their own shirts that were quite well done, so maybe ask them how they did it and whether something quirky could be done in bulk. As another point, we don't know how many people will eventually turn up and if we pay for shirts then we could end up paying a lot more than we end up using... unless we got people to send money for their shirt to Michael and he holds onto the shirt until Pride... that might give people an incentive to actually turn up, and if not then we keep the money :P

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Well, maybe have two sets of shirts.

One, plain purple shirt of whichever design that the wearer wants.

One, a design printed onto a t-shirt. It could have something simple on the back, with something more arty on the front. If it's on a white shirt then you can just upload a .jpg or similar and it'll print that on. If you have a scan, you can turn that into a .jpeg or if you've photoshop you can paint it there.

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Most town centers have t-shirt printing places, I think. I know Cardiff certainly has at least two. If I can make this I intend to get a shirt printed. No idea yet what I'll have on it, but I'll make sure it's a purple one. ;) Or I might make a shirt myself by cutting up a black, a grey, a white, and a purple t-shirt up into strips and sewing them together again to make a t-shirt-flag type... thing! :D

Another idea if to have a simple 'dress code' we can all stick to. Something like... wear what you like, so long as it's one or more of the the following colours - Black, grey/silver, white, purple! Everyone can stick to that easy. ;)

If I do come along, I might have a sexual friend with me as support, if that is permissable. He's the one who found out about asexuality when I thought I was 'broken'. :wub: I owe him more for that than he knows.

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Most town centers have t-shirt printing places, I think. I know Cardiff certainly has at least two. If I can make this I intend to get a shirt printed. No idea yet what I'll have on it, but I'll make sure it's a purple one. ;) Or I might make a shirt myself by cutting up a black, a grey, a white, and a purple t-shirt up into strips and sewing them together again to make a t-shirt-flag type... thing! :D

Another idea if to have a simple 'dress code' we can all stick to. Something like... wear what you like, so long as it's one or more of the the following colours - Black, grey/silver, white, purple! Everyone can stick to that easy. ;)

If I do come along, I might have a sexual friend with me as support, if that is permissable. He's the one who found out about asexuality when I thought I was 'broken'. :wub: I owe him more for that than he knows.

If you could do that thing with the shirts, and pull it off, that'd be fantastic! Would you be able to do the same for others, if they gave you the money and their sizes?

A dress code we will need, as minimum for those not willing to do anything fancy.

There were a few sexual allies, who were friends of an ace, who came along this year. Some of them were wearing the flag too and just blended in with the rest of us. So that's fine, yeah. Especially if he's such an important ally *g*

Another idea, which could be on it's own or in combination, is to do one phrase like 'asexual and proud' or 'asexuals exist too' but in a different language on several shirts. This would have to be hand painted on but.....

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Why would the slogans have to be hand painted? I suppose it depends how big they are... Do t-shirt printing shops (there is one in the next town along from me btw) only do A4 sized pics on the front?

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Most town centers have t-shirt printing places, I think. I know Cardiff certainly has at least two. If I can make this I intend to get a shirt printed. No idea yet what I'll have on it, but I'll make sure it's a purple one. ;) Or I might make a shirt myself by cutting up a black, a grey, a white, and a purple t-shirt up into strips and sewing them together again to make a t-shirt-flag type... thing! :D

Another idea if to have a simple 'dress code' we can all stick to. Something like... wear what you like, so long as it's one or more of the the following colours - Black, grey/silver, white, purple! Everyone can stick to that easy. ;)

If I do come along, I might have a sexual friend with me as support, if that is permissable. He's the one who found out about asexuality when I thought I was 'broken'. :wub: I owe him more for that than he knows.

If you could do that thing with the shirts, and pull it off, that'd be fantastic! Would you be able to do the same for others, if they gave you the money and their sizes?

I've never actually done this before, and will be expensive if I do do it (as I'll have to buy 4 t-shirts of the same size to destroy and hope I don't mess it up and waste them). Might end up looking very punk, and to be worn one time only before falling apart. :redface:

I could ask my mum to knit me a t-shirt in an a-flag design. More likely I'll design something for a t-shirt printers to do for me.

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Even though I won't be there, I like the uniform shirts idea. And not everyone has to wear them - even when we had matching shirts at SF pride, we also had people who wore their own awesome non-matching ace apparel.

But one advantage of the matching shirts is recognition - it makes people remember your group more and pay more attention. After I marched, I later had a few people stop me to ask about asexuality because they recognized the shirt, so I think it helps a lot for visibility.

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Well, hand painted mostly because it'd probably be cheaper. This entire thing is going to cost money, so doing things either in bulk where we can, or by hand if possible to do so properly. And someone was looking for an artsy look.

Though, if we can get them printed at decent prices that'd be good too.

Also, we should have three lists of people. 'Will come for sure', 'Hope to come', and 'Chance of coming'.

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*rolls around*

I sorta want to come, if only to meet lots and lots of people... but finances... >_<;;;

Perhaps I could convince my parents to make a trip of it as well, so I feel less pressured to justify it. >_>;;;

I don't know... is there a "vaguely interested" list anywhere?

I'll add you to the list. The list is not a commitment to come. We'll make another list for people who have confirmed.

On another point: there's a temptation to make a massive recruitment drive now. I think we should hold off till we know what we're doing a bit better. I don't want hoards of people to read this, see a plan that's half-formed and never look again.

I will need help though. I've never organised any kind of meetup other than pride marches. Yet if everything works out as we want it to, we will have people arriving from all over the world. To justify them travelling all this way, we will need to arrange more activities than just the march. It's what we're doing in the surrounding days that I'd like to concentrate on at this early stage of planning.

I agree uniform shirts might make the group stand out better than if everyone does their own thing. Don't get me wrong. If people want to do their own thing, it's not like we're not going to allow them to join us. If one or two people do something different that may even be a good thing, especially if they are sufficiently exuberant.

Maybe we should make T-shirts in the flag colours. (My goodness. I really *have* been well and truly converted to the flag. Never thought this would happen...)

PS. To Tigoness: yes, sexual allies are absolutely welcome to march with us. My sister is already coming, for one.

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I'm not against uniform shirts, I'm just anti-boring-shirt :D

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<------ Still not on list of interested persons :unsure:

More seriously though, waiting to do the big drive later is a good point. But putting out feelers should be done as early as possible too, for travel costs. And for things that need to be bought, spreading the cost out over the year will make it easier.

And really, if we can get an idea of who will be willing to put up their couch or a spare bed for others to stay on that'd be good - aces, those coming to the parade, those who just want to help out behind the scenes.... and that may need some lead up time. Though maybe not a year.

And yay for conversion to the flag! :D

Also, MUSIC! If we can have music in some way that'd be brilliant. Draws attention, makes you more memorable. Even if it's just some bells or something.

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Music? Hmm... MUST include Meatloaf's 'I would do anything for love.. but I won't do that.' ;)

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Music? Hmm... MUST include Meatloaf's 'I would do anything for love.. but I won't do that.' ;)

I support this idea! Though, errr, some do.

We could do a weird comedy version of it where everyone goes "I WOULD DO ANY-THING FOR LOVE, BUT I WON'T DO THAT!" and then a few people in the back pop up "Weeeeel, some do do it for love...." and then everyone else goes "WE WOULD DO ANY-THING FOR LOVE, AND A FEW EVEN DO THAT.... REMEMBER SAFE SEX, CONDOMS! ANYBODY WANT SOME CONDOMS?!"

Errrr, I'm not a song writer.

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7th July should be a day when the victims of the horrific attack on London are remembered. I don't think anything should distract from what happened on that day not so many yrs ago. And as for being bigger than HRH's celebration? In my house, we stand for the Queen's speech.

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1) I think people are capable of remembering two things at once

2) Life goes on

3) Good for you. You must be the only person I know who does.

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7th July should be a day when the victims of the horrific attack on London are remembered. I don't think anything should distract from what happened on that day not so many yrs ago. And as for being bigger than HRH's celebration? In my house, we stand for the Queen's speech.

1 - We can do more than one thing at the same time.

2 - It isn't one of the big five/ten/twenty year anniversaries

3 - What better way to stick it to the terrorists than showing that we're still celebrating life and diversity?

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2 - It isn't one of the big five/ten/twenty year anniversaries

Er it's the Diamond Jubilee - i.e. the 60th anniversary! However it's not 7 July; it will be celebrated 2-5 June.

3 - What better way to stick it to the terrorists than showing that we're still celebrating life and diversity?

Very good point!

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2 - It isn't one of the big five/ten/twenty year anniversaries

Er it's the Diamond Jubilee - i.e. the 60th anniversary! However it's not 7 July; it will be celebrated 2-5 June.

I think that was in reference to July 7th, Michael, not the Jubilee...

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