<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
data-hsystem="true"></head><body><style>p{margin: 0;padding: 0;}</style><p>Once
years ago, I did a study of the Commonwealth Club, for our nonprofit at the
time.. There are a few things to say right off..</p><p><br></p><p>* people will
meet if the content is compelling</p><p>* people will meet if there seems to be
benefit in the social network</p><p>* people have to know about the event in
some way.. </p><p>etc.. </p><p><br></p><p>however, in the case of the
Commonwealth Club, a decades old, very large .org.. one thing I found in common
with the nearly many dozen events-per-month was.. food.. Almost every event, be
it a promotional speaker or author, to book clubs, to panel discussions, and
more.. every event had some kind of predictable food/drink approach.. and some
kind of fee too actually..</p><p><br></p><p>I believe that the NorthWest'ers
basically go straight to a bar for their geo meetings.. I dont think they try to
make a formal meeting much, though I dont know.. I might be biased a bit,
since I dont go to bars.. but on casual inspection it appears that way..
</p><p><br></p><p>Here in the SF Bay Area, it is clearly the "seedling in the
forest of giants" .. the biggest tech in the world is here, and the tens of
thousands of people in those companies have their own timeline and pressures...
it is not obvious how to make a local chapter meeting compelling in the midst of
all of this very large scale activity</p><p><br></p><p>best from
Berkeley</p><p> -Brian </p><p><br>On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 10:53:25 -0700, Landon
Blake <sunburned.surveyor@gmail.com> wrote:<br></p><blockquote dir="ltr"
style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); padding-right: 0px; padding-left:
5px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 0px;" _mce_style="border-left: 2px solid
#000000; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 5px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right:
0px;"><div id="html-message"><div dir="ltr">I feel like a really choked the
chicken on the 2014 Annual Meeting for our chapter. I didn't do a good job
promoting and the meeting was poorly attended.<div><br></div><div>I'd like to
know if there are a couple of chapter members that would be interested in
forming an ad-hoc group to start preparing for the 2015 Annual Meeting right
now. If there is support, I'd like to plan and think about marketing a full day
event next year. </div><div><br></div><div>I think our Annual Chapter Meeting
is a great time to reach out to GIS professionals and programmers that aren't
typically associated with our organization. I may be able to help sponsor some
of the cost of a more formal annual meeting.</div><div><br></div><div>Any
volunteers? Any comments?</div><div><br></div><div>Landon</div></div>
</div>
<br><hr><br>
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--<br>Brian M Hamlin<br>
OSGeo California Chapter<br>
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