This is not a bad concept, but I am not sure that it
is feasible for us at this point. Actually, the
convention is open for non-members all day Sunday
during the auction.
I am not certain that opening up other parts for
non-members is a good idea. First, we risk alienating
folks who just paid us $59 for registration if we let
non-paying folks in on Fri night.
Second, at the risk of sounding self-serving, what's
in it for us? Folks who would do this would only be
locals and they would not likely be interested in the
State of the AGA stuff because they likely won't know
anything about the organization.
It is likey that many of the non-members would be
people who have an interest in plants but not enough
of an interest to register. It is likely they would be
classified as beginners so we would have to cater to
that market.
As for "open it up to non-members" that just don't
want to join the club - well I say we are a volunteer
group that helps our membership and does conferences
for our membership if they don't want to join I
personally am not going to want to cater to them.
Like you guys I volunteer my time to the group. It is
precious to me, if someone does not want to join thats
fine I would like to know why, maybe we can improve,
but if they have no actionable reason then in my
opinion their wants do not matter to me.
These conventions inevitably take a large share of our
personal time, I do it for the folks who are commited
in their interest to the cause, our members. Sorry if
that sounds a little harsh and self-serving :-).
We might pick up a few members but I am not sure we
can benefit enough for the extra work it will cause.
Think extra registrations for guests only name tags,
think advertising for that target market. Heck we
don't have any plan of attack for advertising to our
primary market and it is April!!!!
I do like the idea and I think we should try and do
some seminar type stuff but use a different venue.
Kindof like the NEC or ACA where we have a group of
hardcore hobbyists and we offer to do a talk on
planted tanks or something along those lines.
Third, we as a board and an organization are taxed
right now. I think adding more things for us to do is
not prudent until we add more capacity with additional
members who can be relied on to follow through on
their tasks.
In time though this idea will need to be revisited
because it obviously has merit.
Larry
--- Cheryl Rogers <cheryl@wilstream.com> wrote:
One of the suggestions that has been made in the
past on certain
internet forums is to open the convention to
non-members. Another
suggestion was to hold public seminars.
What if we make Friday night's activities open to
the public? Friday
night is usually not as technical, and we're having
"open mike" for a
little while, and AGA state of the union stuff. Why
not advertise that
this portion is open to the public for FREE but you
have to register and
seats are limited.
I don't really care if anyone from the Public even
shows up, but it
looks good that we offered it as a service.
Cheryl
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