[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by christyf5

Steve,

I'm a member of the PSAS as well but neither you nor I were there when the PSAS first started out with 6 guys hanging out in another guys basement geeking out over some tank. Its not like it started off with 350 people wanting to pony up their $20 to see Anthony Calfo or Charles Delbeek give a talk. I'm sure people will pay dues when there is something worth paying for. That is going to take time.

not saying that, but what I am saying is that due to the population on the island and the geographical setting I would not expect anything on the Island to become even close to what PSAS ended up being.. yes I agree that 10 fish geeks is a start but the problem is our location and how spread out we are. take for example a start of 50 people. this is a good number for a start but now say that 50 people 20 are from Vic, 12 from Nanimo and the rest from all over the island. In a different club setting say all 50 are from Victoria. so for situation where every one is from the sane town at a normal meeting I would expect 15 to 20 people to attend regularly (most clubs get about 1/3 the membership attending regularly) now this doesn't mean the same 1/3 of the people but on average you will get about 1/3 attending.

now look at the first situation where the club is spread all over the island. how are you going to hold meetings? are you going to have them at different locations all the time? some ones house? ect??? are people going to travel all the time for them?? I expect the turn out would be lower than 1/4 on average and would end up being like we do now by some one inviting everyone over to look at there tank.

Ok so if we go with a more formal club with membership and everything. you are going to need a constant place to hold your meetings, like a hall or a empty garage ect.. where you can set things up for different meeting agendas. this works good when everyone is from the same area but for a spread out club people who are not close will get tired of driving long distances (already 1 person asking about carpooling in the post).

I am not saying it is a bad idea or that it won't work but rather that there is a lot more aspects to look at then a lot of people realize. I run a military club and the membership is spread out like crazy but we only have 1 annual meeting a year and out of 200 members you think I can get 20 that will commit to being on a couple comities that meet 4 times a year lot of changes coming for next year I tell ya

another thing to look at is how are you going to spread the word about this club? you want to do it in such a way that people with out Internet can participate also, which means you will have to do regular mail outs to keep them informed which costs money. and so on and so on.

you can start with 10 people but I think really until you get a paying membership you will not be doing anything that we don't already do on Can reef and when we go to other peoples places to help them or just stare at there tanks.

Steve