Eurohash 2021 - How it happened

The part where I realise Prague Hashers are not so keen...

Good morning. Today I will continue the tale of how the biggest thing I have ever done came to pass. Eurohash this summer was a monumental challenge, made much more difficult because of Covid. But there were issues way before anyone knew Covid was a thing, so I will start this post where the last one ended – with me returning home after Eurohash in Vienna in 2017, having gotten up on stage and told everyone there that I WOULD be bidding for the 2021 event in Edinburgh…
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I got home to Prague on Sunday afternoon feeling quite good about things. I was, probably, a little hungover still, and was most definitely still confused about the guy waking me up in the street to ask for directions instead of stealing all my belongings, but I had decided that he probably thought this set up was too good to be true, and expected there to be police officers on standby to arrest him if he tried to take off with my backpack.

Anyway, none of that mattered anymore, because I was back in Prague. As, it turned out, were the other Prague hashers who had been in Vienna. And unknown to me at this time, they were less happy about things than I was.

Now, let me go on record here and say that I accept I committed a bit of a blunder in Vienna. I probably shouldn’t have announced in front of all those people that Prague would be bidding for Eurohash without discussing it with the rest of the mis-management team beforehand.

I mean, I’d been talking about it for a couple of years, so kind of thought they knew I was planning something. But in hindsight it’s clear that they’d all just thought I was uttering drunken nonsense, and had no intention of actually going ahead with things.

A few days after returning home I got an event invite on Facebook. This event was going to be on an as yet undecided date, and would be a chance for the entire mis-management team to get together and decide whether or not Prague should put in a bid for Eurohash.

I immediately posted in this event with an outline of my plan, and stated I was more than happy to sit down and discuss things with everyone. I made it clear that this was something that I wanted to do for myself, and that while I would of course very much appreciate any help or assistance some of the others wanted to offer, I wasn’t in any way EXPECTING or DEMANDING people take part who didn’t want to.

It was clear to me already that putting on an event of this magnitude was going to require a LOT of effort. I didn’t want anyone to feel like they were being press-ganged into it. At the time I was working nights, and not doing very much while there, so figured I could do most of the logistical stuff quite easily in the 10 hours a night I was sitting at a computer doing nothing.

I never got a reply to my post. It was clear from the posts in the event that other people were not keen, and I understood that. I was willing to sit with them at any time, either one to one or in a group, and explain my reasons for wanting to do this. But there was never any further discussion on the subject of whether Prague should bid for Eurohash or not.

Not that I was involved with anyway – it would later become clear that there were discussions going on behind my back.