So, how do I get into this?
The goal of the Fire Triangle was to make it very easy for people who are interested in the fire arts to step into it safely. New folks joined our facebook community and would come to a backyard fire jams. It helped peoplet o see fire in action, and to meet others who will show folks how to step into it. We always provided a wealth of safe, non-firey toys for people to experiment with, and our community is very good about sharing information with others. If you want to light up for the first time, please talk with an experienced fire spinner and they will help provide tools and walk you through the steps. (For tips on how to walk someone through a “virgin sacrifice,” aka their first burn, please see Fire Safety.)
Neighborhood and Local Ordinances
Whenever throwing a fire jam, be sure to make sure that the event is cleared with the neighbors. A bunch of people whipping fiery things around, even if they are experienced and following strict safety guidelines, can nevertheless scare neighbors or landlords and invite unwanted attention. Spend some time with your neighborhood, tell them about it very casually, and they will almost always be cool with it. (Hooray for livin’ in the South!)
Be sure also to keep your fire jam within local noise ordinances. In most places, loud parties after 11:00 PM constitute a noise disturbance, so be sure to turn the music down once quiet hours come around.
Organization (or, what is a DIC?)
The Fire Triangle follows a unique organization in that it integrates many business and community organizational concepts, but bases its offices on explicit sexual innuendo. (After all, political offices deserve to be made fun of!)
The office that handles all the central stuff (web management, legal and insurance issues and so on) is the Council Undertaking Noble Tasks (or CUNT for short). The CUNT is also in charge of appointing managers for the various projects of The Fire Triangle, known, amusingly enough, as Dude(tte)s In Charge (DICs) The CUNT also takes direct input from the community administrators in an open office known as the Mouth that provides the voice of the community.
Decisions within the CUNT are based on consensus. CUNT members are selected for having intentions that are in alignment with the Mission Statement, and work together to synthesize ideas that are good for everyone.
The Fire Triangle hosts weekly jam sessions in various places throughout the Triangle that are owned or operated by its members. Though regular and weekly, these events change locations each week and fall on different days of the week each time. These weekly events are organized entirely through The Fire Triangle facebook group.
Guidelines for Scheduling Managers
Scheduling managers help continue the tradition of weekly jams in the Fire Triangle by coordinating the dates and times of fire jams with hosts. Scheduling managers should good at organization and leadership, experienced community members, and clever, witty writers. The goal of the scheduling manager should be to try to make things easy and fair for the hosts, steer the jams toward locations and times that benefit the most people, and try to make things easy on him/herself.
Schedules are sent out as bulk emails or facebook messages to hosts. Schedules are done in 2-3 month blocks, per scheduling manager’s preference. It is strongly suggested that the conversations be conducted as open thread rather than private conversations with hosts and scheduling managers; this makes it much easier for the other hosts to coordinate with each other.
Weekly jams are held once per week, on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday (whatever is most convenient for the hosts), in different locations throughout the Triangle (Orange, Chatham, Durham and Wake counties). They start at dark-thirty till everyone leaves or the host says “move it.”
When dealing with new hosting locations, make sure that the property is accommodating to the kinds of jams that we have. Properties with small, debris-laden backyards or overly nosy neighbors are probably not going to be the best places to have a fire jam. While we want to keep hosting rights open to the community, we want to make sure that the experience is enjoyable for ALL participants.
Deciding who hosts when is up to the scheduling manager, but here are some good guidelines to follow:
- jam slots are filled mostly on a first-come, first-served basis
- try to allow people who haven’t hosted in the longest period of time to have some hosting priority in the event that multiple people want the same date
- try to encourage as much geographic variety as possible
- No one host should host twice in the same two-month block, unless they are “epic” venues (like the Warehouse)
- make sure the host confirms and acknowledges the date before putting it up on Facebook
- schedule early, and be calm, patient, friendly and fair. After all, this is all in good fun!
- talk to other scheduling managers if you have difficulties
Using Facebook Events and Google Calendar for Fire Triangle Jams
Cardinal rule of Facebook events: everyone is overwhelmed with them, so make events that people actually WANT to look at.
Part of what makes the Fire Triangle such a good way to throw parties is that we have a very simple, streamlined system for invites and events. Most events that we get through Facebook get ignored quickly because they either bog you down with too much information, or they are formatted in such a way that is not familiar. The Fire Triangle doesn’t. The facebook events are easily recognizable, to-the-point, and fun to read (I hope!). Here are the basic components for setting up a Fire Triangle jam:
1: Date in Title. Always use the same numerical format (01-02-03). Guests have come to recognize this, so when they see the date they immediately know, in no uncertain terms, what it is and when. We live in an age of too much information as it is, so we try to make it easy for everyone.
2: Cool Title. We already know what this is; it’s a fire jam on such-and-such a date. Go wild with your title. If you are having a special theme, like a massage party in addition to the fire jam, there is no need to call it a “Fire Jam and Massage Party.” We already know that it’s a fire jam. Call it “Flaming Massage-A-Rama” or something similarly fun to read. The more fun you can insert into the invitations, the more fun you help add to the party itself. (Hosts can make their own titles, as long as they include the 01-02-03 date format)
3: Time: 8:00 PM – 11:00 PM. Times are irrelevent. People will show up whenever they want to and will leave when the party ends. Use the same start/end time, and go with that.
4: Practical information prominently displayed. Fire jams need very little pertinent information because we all pretty much know what to do, what to bring, and what’s going on. If you have special information that you need to tell people, make it clear at the top of the page, and keep it as short as possible. Guests don’t want to read more than a sound bite unless it’s funny.
5: Goofy content. All of the bases have already been covered before you even get into the description. Go nuts and be creative! (Hosts can write their own descriptions, as long as they are creative and fun. We don’t need to be bogged down with details that we either already know or will quickly find out when we get there.)
6: Message guests for reminders. A day or two before the event, the scheduling manager (not the host!) will send out the reminder emails, which brings us to…
Reminder Messages
1: Send this out to “Attending” and “Maybe Attending.” You’ll have to send this twice, so remember to Ctrl+C the content before you send. We do this because people are bogged down with facebook messages as it is, and we don’t want to annoy people who’ve RSVP’ed “no” or haven’t RSVP’ed. Those people don’t need reminders.
2: Start with “Reminder:” As with the event title 01-02-03 date, a standard, recognizable format makes things easy to read. This tells guests exactly what the message is about and implies that it IS pertinent (since they only see it if they RSVP’ed “Attending” or “Maybe”)
3: Repeat the date. You can reuse the 01-02-03 date, or say the day of the week. I prefer the latter, because it’s always sent out so close to the date that “Wednesday” is going to be more recognizable than “06-09-10.” If you do this, you can basically communicate everything the reminder sets out to accomplish without even requiring the guest to open the message. Hell, they can delete it the moment they see it and you’ve already gotten your point across 🙂
4: Content. Keep it short and fun, and include any last-minute information that you need to communicate (host’s announcements, weather forecasts, etc) Don’t go overboard on details, unless they are fun to read.
Google Calendar
1: Make the right time slot.
2: Title in “Spin Jam in [municipality]” format. No names, themes, addresses, jokes or anything. We put this up on the website and don’t need to provide any more information than this.
3: Make sure you’re using a shared calendar. ’cause otherwise this is silly 😛