At the September meeting, we began a discussion of several issues, including new member recruitment, welcoming and teaching newcomers, and communication and activity within the barony. I am posting this summary of our discussion so that everybody can become involved. I'd like to continue the discussion here on the listserv and at the upcoming baronial meetings.

 

Here are some of the things we discussed. I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for ways in which we can improve our barony and make it an even better place to play in. Please post your thoughts to the listserv, send them to me, or attend a baronial meeting.

 

Recruitment of new members

We briefly discussed some ways in which we could work on recruiting new members. Based on discussions at the Fennbrycg meeting, I suggested that we might want to look at recruiting at local ren faires and local harvest fairs (with a goal of doing this Fall 2007). Lord Aedan provided me with a list of fairs in the state and I would like to discuss these fairs over the next few months, and what we might do at these public demos.

 

Do you have other ideas for recruiting new people? What's the best way to do it? Can you suggest methods that you have seen other groups use with success?

 

Some ideas that were kicked around included making posters and printing up baronial business cards and flyers. If you have samples and/or ideas, please bring them to the next meeting, post them here on the listserv, or contact me.

 

Welcoming New Members and Communication

Our discussion quickly moved into covering how we deal with newcomers and how we communicate in BBM. Some of our most recent members related that it had been difficult to find us, that they could have used some more guidance/instruction, and that they wished for more social interaction, either at the meetings or at other events/get-togethers. Older members pointed out that we use our listserv very little in comparison to neighboring groups, and that it is hard to know what's going on in the barony.

 

Some of the possible solutions we discussed were newcomers meetings, making sure that we had links for newcomers on the website (including a link to your listservs!), using a calendar on Yahoo Groups or the baronial website so people would know what was going on, offering classes, and using the listservs more to communicate. With regards to the listservs, one person suggested eliminating the canton listservs and only using EK-BBM to communicate.

 

I'd really like to hear what you think about these issues? When you were new, what did you wish had been done differently? What can we do to be a more welcoming barony? What kind of activities do you think would be good? How are you willing to help?

 

These are the highlights of the meeting, but we hardly scratched the surface of what there is to discuss and what we can do. Over the next few months, I would like the barony to talk and decide on a plan for working on these issues and anything else that we think needs improvement.

 

If you have ideas, thoughts, criticism, or praise, please share them with the barony, either here or at the meetings. I look forward to our conversation!

 

Muirne

Seneschal

P.S. I am posting this to all BBM listservs that I am on, but I would like to see discussion take place only on the BBM listserv so that we do not have multiple conversations going that not everyone can see. If you are not on EK-BBM and would like to join, please contact me.