Spring planting day
Sat 4 May · 10:00 · 4 hours · Lower field
A Gathering is anything people commit to be at: a work session, a meal, a ritual, a council meeting. ARA tracks four types because the people who care about a sauna ritual aren't always the people who want a 9am compost-turn invitation.
The four types
- Work — practical tasks, often labour-shaped. Compost turns, fence repairs, harvest days. Hours logged here can flow into the Ledger.
- Ritual — sauna, meditation, sweat lodge, full-moon circle. Members can opt in or out of being notified about ritual-type events from their notification settings.
- Social — potlucks, birthdays, movie nights. Dietary restrictions show up here automatically.
- Council — governance meetings. Attaches naturally to Council Proposals so meeting notes link back to votes.
The fields you'll fill in
- Title (one line)
- Type (the four above)
- Date and time
- Duration — 15 min to several hours
- Location — free text. "Kitchen" is a fine answer.
- Description — what it is and why someone would come
- Invitees — by default, the whole Sanctuary. You can scope down.
- Recurrence (optional) — see Recurrences and RSVPs
The RSVP options
Three states: Going, Maybe, Not going. "Maybe" is allowed and useful — better than a yes that quietly evaporates. The host sees the totals.
Linking a Scroll for notes
Inside any Gathering you can create or link a Scroll. The Gathering page becomes the agenda; the Scroll becomes the notes. Council uses this constantly — every meeting becomes a paper trail without anyone having to remember to save the doc somewhere.
Calendar export
Click Add to calendar on any Gathering to download an .ics file or get a Google Calendar link. Useful for villagers who live by their own calendar and only check ARA twice a week.
Who sees what
By default Gatherings are visible to every member of the Sanctuary. You can scope an event to a specific Garden's circle (e.g. a planning meeting for the kitchen renovation Garden) so it doesn't clutter everyone's Dashboard. The "invite all" instinct is strong; resist it for working sessions.
One thing to skip
Don't make a Gathering for "everyone be online today between 9 and 5". A Gathering is a commitment to be somewhere at a specific time. If you're trying to coordinate availability, that's a different conversation, and a Scroll is probably the better tool.