Dear ecotopians!!

We hope the summer has been full of inspiration for you!!! :)

Aaaaaand we also hope that you feel inspired to contribute with a little of your own motivation and ideas to next year's biketour! Everyone's contribution is truly important, because we want the biketour collective to reflect the activism and diversity of all of its participants!

This email covers some practical information on how to get involved for 2023!

The first step would be to join the chat group. We use this chat group to facilitate quick and informal discussions. You can join the chat either through a Signal account or a Matrix account. The two platforms are linked and the messages of one are automatically copied to the other.

Click on the links below to join the chat :

Signal group : https://signal.group/#CjQKIEMEMxYSMYS9XYaNwO-HoNXafttiKz3b8k-barwholEyEhBhaP...

Matrix room : https://matrix.to/#/!YynCDvqgsTNOsiUQAB:ecotopiabiketour.net?via=ecotopiabik... (write us an e-mail with your Matrix ID to get invited to the room)

The second step is to send a message (email or chat) describing what motivates you to join, where you are based (country, region, city) and the areas you would like to get involved in (routing, networking, artwork, trailers, webpage, translations, IT infra, workshops, admin, funding, hosting, events, etc...). You can respond directly to the biketour 2023 email address (2023@ecotopiabiketour.net).

If you aren't yet on the biketour orga mailing list (bt-org@eyfa.org) and would like to be added, please let us know.

The third step is to reflect on the locations where you think the biketour should go in 2023. We have created a collaborative map to use for the biketour planning : https://facilmap.org/bt23edit.

For reference, here's a list of the countries the biketour has visited since 1990: https://wiki.ecotopiabiketour.net/Countries

We will discuss the choice of countries and rough routing during the winter meeting this year (see info below).

For those that are new to ecotopia, you can find more general information about the biketour on these sites:

Ecotopia webpage : https://www.ecotopiabiketour.net

Ecotopia wiki : https://wiki.ecotopiabiketour.net

For those that will want to get more involved in the orga, we have a few online tools that we use to get organized! :) We will do a small workshop on ecotopia tech and tools during the winter meeting so that you can become familiar with them :)

As is the ecotopian tradition, we will organize two meetings in preparation for the biketour : one meeting in the winter (November or December 2022) and another meeting in the spring (March or April 2023).

We would need to confirm the location and dates of the winter meeting. If you have any thoughts or proposals, feel free to share them. Here's a pad to brainstorm ideas : https://pad.rankenste.in/p/bt23_wintermeeting_plan

We aim at making a final decision for the winter meeting by mid-October so that those who wish to get involved have enough time to organize their travel and stay.

In solidarity,

The Ecotopia Biketour Collective