mattbell

Not-ephemerisle was a wonderful experience. Despite being a "cancelled" event, it came together extremely well, with lots of people pitching in on both the infrastructure and the fun side to make the event a success. I want to write down my thoughts on the event before I forget them:

- Personalities matter. With the right people, a 120-person event can work well with no one in charge. When there's a problem, experts assemble to fix it, and with a smart, diverse group there are several people who are either experts or could become experts quickly in any given area. People put knowledge and collective good over ego and politics, and that helped differences resolve smoothly. Also, most people overprepared for the event. This meant that we were able to absorb unexpected resource shortages rather well.

- Perhaps knowing that no one was in charge helped encourage people to be self-sufficient. When there's no event organizer to blame for any shortfalls, people are more likely to take initiative to address issues as they come up.

- There was a large number of Saturday day-trippers that ended up spending the night, and there was some difficulty in accommodating them. Saturday day-trippers should probably plan on spending the night, and everyone should plan accordingly.

- It really helped that we had two (and, for a day, three) shuttle boats. This (and the dedication of the shuttle boat drivers) made up for the fact that arrival times were not coordinated at all. However, it put a rather heavy burden on a small number of shuttle boat drivers.

- The open meals during dinner were a great way of getting people to know others in different houseboats.

- The Memocracy conference worked out really well. It was well attended and led to lots of interesting conversations. Keeping the talks to 5 minutes ensured rapid flow of ideas and succinctness.

- Paul did a great job of convincing us to reanchor the city further from shore. I'm glad we did. Shoresteading is not a path to seasteading.

- I'm amused that my box of scrap rope literally held the city together. I think I handed out about 10 short pieces of rope to various houseboaters so that they could lash their boats together.

- Boats need more unique appearances. We were easily recognizable from the roof, but not from the ground floor. We hung a Memocracy emblem in the front, but it was too small to be noticeable.

- Wakeboarding is exhilerating. I need to try that again.

- I've invented a new sport -- waketarping. I had never been wakeboarding (or waterskiing, or tubing etc) until this weekend. However, I already had some ideas about interesting things that can be done with a water surface and speedboat power. I wrapped the corner of a tarp around the rope handle that wakeboarders hold onto, and then lay down on the surface of the tarp with my forearms in a position to provide upward slope and structure to the front of the tarp to keep it out of the water. The movement of the speedboat kept the tarp (and me) on the surface of the water. What made waketarping interesting was that I could feel every wave of water pass over my body as I was pulled along on the tarp. The tarp's thinness gave me a much better water sensation than I got from a wakeboard. (I'm going to stop before I work in a condom metaphor) I have some ideas of how to do waketarping right, with a reinforced tarp that contains an inflated section at the front and various straps in the tarp for people to hold onto. It needs a better name -- maybe "magic carpeting"? (Note that you don't want to use a tarp with a rope attached to it... I made this mistake, and the rope caught on the handle and broke, slinging the handle at the boat with enormous amounts of force.)

- The giant koosh worked better in a local swimming pool than out at not-Ephemerisle. People still had a lot of fun on it, but it didn't stand out next to houseboats several times its size. The koosh worked better when it was a large and nearly insurmountable object vs something that you could look down upon from a houseboat roof.

- My strategy of hanging 50lb of weights on the rope that tied the koosh to the boat so the rope would be invisible and out of people's way ended up backfiring. People didn't see a rope and thought the koosh was unanchored, so they "helpfully" tied additional ropes to it to keep it from drifting away. I untied these ropes, and new ones were added by helpful strangers. (Perhaps I should look upon this as a positive sign that the community was looking out for everyone's benefit)

- My design for a roof-hopping plank would not have worked. I was trying to find a way for more timid people to walk between houseboat roofs, and I did not take into account just how much the roofs tend to move relative to one another.