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Camps & Local Gatherings

The Gathering app manages two holon classes — Camps and Local Gatherings — as part of running The Gathering. This is the usage guide; the field schema behind a camp's custom fields is documented separately in Additional fields.

Everything here is scoped by your current Focus — see Focus. New to the shell? Start with Getting started.

Access

The Gathering nav group appears only for users with Gathering access — superusers and members of the gathering_users group. Being staff or a broad editor does not automatically grant it (it's a deliberate opt-in). If you don't see the Gathering group, ask an administrator to add you. See Access & permissions.

Within the group, the Camps and Gatherings nav items each appear only when your current Focus actually has camps / local gatherings under it.

Creating a Local Gathering vs. a Camp

Each has its own creation page, reached from the + button on its list. Both create the new holon under your current Focus, so with no Focus set the page tells you to pick one first. They differ over the journey:

  • Local Gathering — the journey is optional. If the Focus holon offers relationship journeys you may pick one, and the new gathering is related to its parent on that journey; choose — No journey — and it is simply created under the Focus. Responsible and Follow-up Date belong to that relationship, so they are only saved when you pick a journey.
  • Camp — has a few more requirements:
  • The Focus holon must have a configured relationship journey — the journey new camps are placed on. Without one, creation is blocked with a message to configure it.
  • You choose the camp class (a camp subclass — different events use their own camp subclass so each can carry its own fields), a journey and starting step, a responsible person (from the Focus holon's active team), and an optional follow-up date.

Anyone who can edit the Focus holon can create a camp or a Local Gathering under it — a broad editor, or a member of its team (the same people who can add an event from the holon's own Events section). Creating a Local Gathering also needs Gathering access. See Access & permissions.

Camp info fields in practice

A camp's custom Additional fields (format, capacity, theme, videos, photo slideshows, …) are defined on the camp class and filled in per camp on its detail page. Fields marked public show on the camp's public page. The how-to is in Additional fields; the class/config model is in Holons and classes.

A gathering's places

A Local Gathering's page has a Places section, below Experiences, listing the places at its venue — the main tent, the garden, the dome — from A to Z. Each place has a name, a description, a map link (a web address, such as a map pin of the spot) and one photo; uploading a second photo replaces the first, and deleting a place deletes its photo too. Names are unique within a gathering, ignoring capitals: a second "main tent" beside "Main tent" is refused. Anyone who can edit the gathering can add, edit and delete its places; anyone who can see the gathering can read them. A place an experience's Where names cannot be deleted: the refusal names the experiences using it — clear or change their Where first. Places are not shown on the public site yet, except as an experience's Where.

A camp's public page

Each published camp has its own page on the public site, in the same look as its gathering's page. From top to bottom it shows:

  1. The opening. On the left: "A camp at" the gathering, with its dates and place; the camp's name; its "why" (the camp's reason for being, when the camp class has a public field for it); then its description, themes and links. On the right: the camp's video, its hosts with their photos and short bios, the organisation that brings it, and a Get your ticket button. On a phone the right-hand column comes between the name and the description.
  2. Other public fields the opening does not already show, such as photos.
  3. Each organisation behind the camp, headed "Brought by", with its whole description and its links.
  4. The programme, day by day: the camp's public experiences, one line each, time first, grouped under the days they happen. Only days with something on are shown; experiences without a day come last. A link opens the camp's full programme.

The ticket button uses the camp's own ticket link when it has a public one, and otherwise the gathering's. It is not shown once the gathering is over. When the gathering itself is not published, the camp page does not show its dates, place or ticket link.

Upright or wide video. A camp's video is drawn tall and narrow, the shape of a phone held upright, because most camps film that way. If your camp's video is a landscape film, open the camp in the CRM and set Video shape to Wide: the page then draws it wide and gives the right-hand column more room. Leave it empty for an upright video. The setting is never shown on the public page itself.

List and kanban views

Both Camps and Gatherings offer a list view and a kanban view, scoped to your Focus:

  • The list has column controls (Links, Journey, Responsible, Follow Up, Info) and filters; applied filters live in the URL so the view is bookmarkable and shareable.
  • The kanban columns are journey steps; drag a card to move that camp/gathering to a different step (the same as changing its step on the detail page).

Journeys and step progression

Camps and local gatherings sit on journeys like other holons — each has a current step that tracks where it is in its lifecycle. Move them through steps from the kanban board or the detail page. See Journeys for the underlying model.

A note on the Calendar

The shell Calendar is a follow-up agenda, not an events-by-date calendar: it lists flows (memberships and relationships) that have a follow-up date, grouped into Overdue / Today / Tomorrow / This Week / Next Week / Later / No Date. So a camp appears on the Calendar when its flow has a follow-up date set (for example, the follow-up you set when creating it) — it does not plot camps by their event dates. Use the follow-up date to keep a camp on your radar; use the Camps list/kanban to see them all by status.

Settings

The Gathering settings cards (for example, Locations and Spheres) appear on the Settings page for users with Gathering access, and let you manage the shared tags camps and gatherings can be labelled with.