[Ansteorra] Border Branches - promoting attendance at events

[Chris Zakes]

At 04:38 PM 3/23/2007, you wrote:
>Greetings,
>Had a fire-side chat at Gulf Wars on how border branches could 
>promote more attendance from the
>kingodm at their events.  Thought I'd open it up for discussion to 
>the masses...
>Cheers, Hillary


This is slightly modified from a post I made on this same question in 
another group a couple of years ago...

This is a common problem for folks in new or out-of-the-way groups. 
There are a couple of solutions that others have used in the past:

1. Travel. Get out to as many events as you can manage. This allows 
you to meet and learn from more experienced people, and take some of 
that teaching back to your local group.

2. Invite the rest of the kingdom to come visit you. It's an 
unfortunate truism in the SCA that travelling to a new or 
out-of-the-way group is perceived as "uphill, through the snow" by 
many people (even though travel *from* that area is somehow not seen 
as a hardship.) This is lessened quite a bit if the visitor thinks of 
it as "going to see that nice new fighter I met at Tournament X last 
month", which is why you still need to do some travelling yourself. 
As others have mentioned, "bribes" of free dinner or gas money can 
help in this project.

3. Sponsor a small event. A regional fighter practice or potluck 
revel takes a minimum of effort and again, gets the lines of 
communication going between folks from different areas. If that works 
out, you could expand to something like a "three shires mini-rapier 
academy and revel" or regional arts collegium, where you would invite 
a few specific experts to teach specific classes.

Doing a combined event--say rapier and heraldry or costuming and 
armored combat can help the "draw", but whatever you do, make it 
sound fun and interesting.

4. Sponsor a bigger event. If you have a proven track record of doing 
the smaller events, the powers-that-be will be more likely to look 
favorably on a bid for something like Queen's Champion or Round Table.

But the most important part is that *you* will have to take the first 
step, probably the first several steps. Most folks in this kingdom 
aren't telepathic, they may not realize there is a need for teaching 
and help if you don't ask.

Sitting around complaining about the problem without trying to solve 
it (not that I'm saying that's happening) may make you feel better, 
but it won't produce any positive results.

5. And remember, it could be worse. There was a post a couple of days 
ago on the Rialto about the folks in the shire in Jerusalem trying to 
figure out a way for the Crown of Drachenwald to come visit them.

         -Tivar Moondragon