HOD Alicante 2026 summary

Like all meetups, this year's Hive Open Days in Alicante started and finished in a flash. The weekend was intense and tiring, in a good way.

Day 1

There was a good balance of talks, and plenty of time to socialise especially with the newbies that we managed to onboard. I think there are about 10, and quite a few of them stayed with us for the entire event including the outings. Here's a few of them in the front row, with Hive account@palomap3 and Hive account@ninaeatshere talking thru things with one of them who asked to stay anonymous.

I didn't take many photos of the event, basically I forgot 😅 because I was busy talking to everyone. Here's one of Hive account@tibfox, Hive account@reiseamateur, Hive account@mipiano, Hive account@igormuba, Hive account@ph1102, and half of Hive account@bitterirony. On the other side is one of the onboardees Hive account@anamz, Hive account@palomap3, I didn't get the username of the person sitting by face forward, and finally is Hive account@schmidi's back.

It's always nice to learn more about Hive thru the presentations, but it's even better to listen to a mini concert performed by our very own. Hive account@mipiano and Hive account@alessandrawhite did a sterling performance for us.

Day 2 - Clean planet day

The next day we did a boat trip to a small island an hour away. There were 28 of us, oldies and newbies plus 2 dogs. Hive account@ninaeatshere hosted a quiz for us. We split into three groups and mine came third 🥉 🙃

After the quiz, we started the cleanup. These are two of the new onboardees Hive account@gissse and Hive account@juanmatrader. They were really into the whole activity.

I didn't do so well, but found this sock or bandage. Not sure exactly what it is, I didn't analyse it. It's shocking what people throw away in public!! I forgot to take a photo of all the trash we collected, but I'm sure it will come up in another post from someone else.

In the evening, we went to a microbrewery and had some nice craft beer. I think we earned it after a hard days work picking up a lot of trash. Here's me with Hive account@ph1102, Hive account@edje, Hive account@mipiano, Hive account@ninaeatshere and Hive account@enraizar.

Day 3

On the last day, we stayed in town and Nina did a walkabout. There was a may day festival and the locals were having a blast of a time which made our walk experience that much happier. Then we went to a modern art museum. Modern Art isn't my thing as I normally find it too abstract and can't appreciate it. But I enjoyed this, so much that we felt compelled to leave a little artwork behind.

By this time, a lot of people had left already, and those remaining went for a coffee. There was still a good crowd, me, Hive account@ninaeatshere, Hive account@sinochip , Hive account@godfish, Hive account@honeydue, Hive account@bitterirony, Hive account@alessandrawhite and Hive account@edje . In fact the crowd was still pretty large I couldn't get everyone on the same photo. Next to Hive account@edje is Hive account@nonsowrites, Hive account@enraizar, Hive account@palomap3 and Hive account@tibfox. Without him, none of this weekend would have happened. Thanks so much for organising ✌️👍💯

Goodie bag

No meetup is complete without the goodie bag. This year was orange. An unusual but very nice and sharp colour for a tote bag. We also got some sunglasses, essential for sunny Spain, a notepad, one can never have too many of them, and a Hive pen that writes very smoothly. Then there's a bunch of stickers. And finally a community bingo card. I think this is a great icebreaker activity to get people to talk to one another, and I was particularly happy to see the newbies getting involved and talking to everyone. I hope they will become active in the days to come and become regulars on Hive. I know a few of them are very keen and I hope to see them again in future meet ups.

Till next time!!!