On gatherings out here in general

Was going to post this in the current Melbourne thread, but it probably wouldn't have been good form of me to take that conversation in unintended directions.

Organising stuff - I envy people who are good at it. Even getting half a dozen old school friends together for a catch up once or twice a year is usually tough to make happen.

But organising a tickle-related gathering is about 3 scales up from that and I'm proposing that this will always be so, unless some of the key obstacles move from being invisible/unmentionable to visible/openly discussed. What's more, there's even a further obstacle to doing that which can't be lightly ignored.

The invisible/unmentionable is how do potential gathering attendees feel about inevitably hanging out with mainly their own gender, and possibly people with dis-similar tickling tastes according to gender.

And the obstacle to discussing that, well there's a couple, but the one I had in mind was the importance of not marginalising any of your fellow forum members in the process of getting across your own take on things.

I probably have it kind of easy in suggesting this happen, since I have another (m/m) tickling forum that I help run and can just scurry back there if things all fall a bit flat.

But anyway, here's a rough template of what I think would help build confidence around making a gathering reach fruition. The numbers represent my own answers (1 = strongly disagree, 3 = neutral, 5 = strongly agree).

a) You would enjoy a purely social gathering of tickling fans - 4
b) It matters to you that there be gender balance at a gathering - 1
c) If it's not gender balanced, tickling activity would still hold an interest - 4
d) You'd feel confident to comunicate what you're up for and not up for - 3
e) It's reasonable to keep things a bit conservative while people are getting to know each other - 4
f) You could co-exist OK with fans of different kinds of tickling to you, and at least be social (eg m/f, f/f, m/m, f/m fans mingling) - 4

Did I miss any? Very probably. Hope this sparks something useful down the track, and my continued encouragement goes to people who try and organise such things.

Interesting post, Hewitt. I'm more on the optimistic side regarding the feasibility of making a gathering actually happen.

Regarding "how do potential gathering attendees feel about inevitably hanging out with mainly their own gender", i don't see the issue. The meeting is for meeting other people in the community and tickling - not for anything else. As a result, i don't see why people of the same gender would feel uncomfortable with such an arrangement. Nobody is going to 'force' them to get tickled, and that would only apply if any tickling was actually happening during the first gathering, which of course is not set in stone.

If anybody wants to continue this discussion, with the ultimate goal of making a meeting actually happen, please don't be shy, and post to the thread!

I've been saying that a gathering should take place for over a year now.

I'm just gonna drop it right now. It's Feb 5th.

Saturday February 28th, Belgium Beer Gardens in Pahran, Melbourne, from 2pm onwards.

Be there.

Anybody need the address or need to confirm anything? PM me.

I look forward to it.

-Xionking

Props to ya for pickin' a date and location. It's the way this starts.

I suggest you tell those attending what you're gonna wear, or bring some object that's obvious (a ball, an ornament, a statuette...) that you can stick on the table.

Good to see Australia gathering!

The place is too public...

Call me the party pooper but I think the beer garden is too public. I would be interested in meeting up as long as things were a bit more privet...

When meeting in a public place for purely social purposes, it's called a munch. One can find descriptions and history on wikipedia these days.

Gatherings are in private locales.

Both should be announced in the Gatherings section, too, but at this point, that you've got it going is a bit more important than where you got it going.