[Ansteorra] maybe an answer to recruitment problems

[willowdewisp at juno.com]

Back in the days we were trying to organize the SCA in Dallas one of our BIG recruitment tool was was the little event
Later when I was in Namron the group would put on little events  every month and the bardic guild would do a little bardic revel every three months and the players guild did a fete every 4 months. Other guilds and households did things on the average of one a month. Business meeting which everyone who cared came and had impute. We had to have a lot of impute to keep this kind of schedule going. Lots of room for people to try out ideas and be creative and lots of places to learn how to do things. 
Populace meeting were the little revel in the loft.The populace meetings--revels were very important because the money gathered at these activities paid for the Loft. The group was always promoting  pieces ( ie. people ) up to the level of having interesting fetes so people would be willing to donate money.  
The officers spent most of their time working with people so they would get  the training needed to do these fetes. Leadership in the  group came from the Baron/ess and the officers and the heads of the household, peers and other interested people.  This is important because each and ever task was done by choice. By that  I mean someone chooses to have a guild meeting or bring a dish to a fete or to make sure the hall had decorations. They would go to whoever was in charge and say I or "we" will be doing this and once they got their OK they did it or failed to do it. Once the person in charged "autocrat" said "yes" to the general idea the person or persons were mostly on their own.
You would Think that the officers just stepped out of the way ,but this was not true. The officers and autocrats provided a communication network that would gently check up and offer suggestions and link people to resources both physical and social. If the person knew what they were doing( the end product of all the work the "leaders" were aiming at) they left the person alone with some "that a boy's" and a general idea of who was doing what. 
Keeping track of who was doing what and how well was how the B and B knew who was ready to advance. Back then we took the idea of Noble obligation very seriously. We thought that awards served as a way for new people to look for role models and information resources.The medieval program implied that people with awards were our leaders. This is because the Medieval model is based on a military model. 
One little revel hosted by a guild or household every 8 weeks This was done by the group and was paid for by the group. This was check up on by the officers but it was viewed as a time that people learned by trial and error. The Barony wasn't going to lose anything if something didn't come off. These were the training grounds that allowed people to hone skills that made people capable of doing the Big Barony events. 
willow

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