Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: > I see two main challenges to solving this conundrum: > > * getting people to attend a meeting in the first place > * encouraging people to continue to participate afterwards
Sridhar, I'd love to be an active member of SLUG. The group seems pretty healthy and by all accounts it reminds me of the best features of many of the computer usergroups I remember fondly from the 80's. I share(literally) Mary's child/meeting night problem. I have a schedule that makes it just about impossible to attend meetings unless they're on a Monday or Tuesday night. It's a very haphazard scheduling outside of that. I'm not suggesting you change the night of the meeting, but I wonder if for many people it's just logistic issues that prevent them from attending? Many of the most succesful user-groups and clubs that I have seen operating have achieved a great number of things, but they nearly always did it on the back of a very strong social network. Usergroups are great as places to make true friends and meet with them regularly for some face-to-face and focussed time talking about common interests. If you want to attract and retain members I'd maintain a focus on community and sociality. It's something that every member will need to practice too though; it isn't something that only a few can do. In the end that'll mean that attracting and maintaining members will probably have to be a shared concern. If it's only the committee worried about it you're probably in for a tough time doing much about it. regards Terry -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
