Hi,

Thanks for your positive and critical comments, as usual Ben.

Richard I think that is important to listen to a community when reaching to it (I remember a talk we had where I suggested an approach closer to anthropology instead of marketing). Many of us value your contributions, despite of approaching them in a critical way. For example, I think that promotion is important, but popularity is not, and the later is not a proper measure of the effectivity of the former. As a Latin American (that means people born and rise Latino America, not Latinos living in United States) for me is really alien the North American people (that means people living in the North region of the American continent that goes from Alaska to Patagonia and beyond) is kind of obsessed with popularity, competition, winning and losing, at least for what popular media depicts (even seems that loser is kind of a big insult over there). I don't think that winning a competition is the best way of making a younger become part of collaborative open community. Also, in an interconnected world, I feel more inclined to volunteer my time helping a young person from the Global South to become part of the Pharo/Smalltalk community that to volunteer my time for a pretty localized competence in a particular place of the Global North.

That being said, I think that little money can help a lot (specially in the Global South) and I like the idea of making young people interested in the offerings that Smalltalk has. The average FLOSS project has a media of one developer [1], so even winning one more after the competition is a big win. But I would try to volunteer my time in something that brings the gap between Pharo communities and young people and between the Global North and the Global South, specifically in my Pharo powered project, Grafoscopio.

[1] https://mako.cc/writing/hill-when_free_software_isnt_better.html

So I'm glad that you are open to suggestions. Here come mine about how this could be done, but this may also become something totally different of your actual proposal, but, hopefully, also more global, interesting, long lasting and a middle point between your promotional efforts and the activities of this community.

Is an immersive inclusive global experience where new people (regardless of age, ethnicity or gender) can participate in a Smalltalk powered project and get mentorship from community members and start a long lasting relationship with a powerful technology, Smalltalk, and the friendly communities around it.

## How it will work

Seasoned global Smalltalkers will propose a "tent", which is a set of related campfire projects (one or many) directed towards newbies, related with programming and coding, but also connected them with other activities which recognize that people comes from different backgrounds, have different interests and that an inclusive tech community is more than code[2]. The projects will allow newbies to learn coding, but also to express and connect it with wider concerns (documentation, civic tech, entrepreneurship, gaming, learning, etc).

[2] https://morethancode.cc/about/

Interested campers will find the different tents where they can join and the tent leader will prepare a set of (increasingly complex?) activities for the members of the tent. Campers will work in the activities on a weekly basis and setup and open source code repository for working together.

Coordination language for the Global Campfire will be English for tent leaders, but campers can use native language for communication between them and for some activities (local documentation, translations) as we don't want to impose a unique language to become part of a community and we recognize active Smalltalkers from around the world that can help local communities, made them stronger and better connected.

## Tent medals

Becoming part of a open collaborative community is mostly about being able to help each other and how you and the community create value for each other. So while this is not a competition, we recognize that small money can be an important incentive to keep communities dynamic.

At the end of the Campfire the community will provide with Member Badges and Tent Medals which recognize the work done by all the participants and also will give a small money incentive for the tent that made the best work, so the tent can decide how to spend it better. The evaluation will be done for each Tent leader, and also two external judges.

The Tent Medals will be:

• 1 Gold Medal: XXX Dollars.
• 1 Silver Medal: XYZ Dollars.
• 1 Bronze Medal: ABC Dollars.
  

## Closing

I really don't know about the details here: How do we assign the prices? There is any better place that the one referred at [2] to showcase the important of going beyond code in tech communities? What is the proper duration for the Campfire? This is just a draft, but I think that this is something I would like to volunteer for and serves better the need for new people in our community, and can be also addressed from our local context and particular projects while connecting more the global community.