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Adopt-a-Visitor is the closest thing to magic that an Infusion has.
Except that “magic” was just that unexpected person-to-person connection that turns a “trip” into a “visit” and a community bond. Locals volunteer to host or accompany a visitor for some part of the weekend. A coffee. A hike. A drive somewhere scenic. A dinner. A drop-off at the ferry terminal.
The locals are not professional tour guides. They are just enthusiastic locals who enjoy their community and want to share it. The visitors are not professional travel writers. They are just people who showed up.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Z3zvjiEnSBA
Run the program through your Discord.
Create an “adopt a visitor” channel and encourage people (locals and visitors alike) to post something about themselves and what they enjoy.
"Hi, I am Jamie. I love hiking and would happily take a small group up Mount X on Saturday morning. DM if interested."
That is the whole system. It does not need software. It does not need an algorithm. It needs trust, and a clear set of expectations.
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Shoulda-coulda: The larger 2026 infusion brought more interest and chaos to the aopt-a-visitor channel. We wished that we’d chosen early on a way within the Discord channel that indicated when an adoptee or adopter had been “taken” ie connected with the person or people they wanted to connect with to make it easier to track who was left to match with (both for us as mods and people looking for a match).
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Volunteers at our Nanaimo Infusion replicated the adopt-a-visitor channel at The ‘Family Photo’ by having paper forms people could post on a bulletin board at the event with their contact info.
This is especially useful for visitors who are not on Discord, and had only followed the Infusion on social media.
