I've never lived remotely close enough to feel "local". For many of the folks who come to the big time events like VCFE, distance is everything for regular enough physical participation for it to feel club-like. Then you've got the decreasingly smaller and more regular events: festivus, swap meets, monthly workshops, and weekend docent schedule work in the museum. Considering how many folks are outside of NJ who have been regular attendees of the big event that congealed us in the first place, the line in the sand of who feels part of the group is going to be a bit fuzzy. Crossing several states to get me to Infoage has *always* made attendance at the smaller events into a trip that must be planned for, and cannot be taken on a lark. I'm genuinely surprised at folks who are hauling 2.5-6 hours each way for a weekend workshop, that's not in the cards for so many of us. To those that can, I say kudos, and that the FOMO is real for the night-shift guy living +3.5 hours out who's worked weekends for the past 8+ years. The number of things occurring at System Source has helped fuel participation opportunities for folks orbiting Baltimore, but again, that's still a drive if you aren't within roughly a 60 minute radius. The recent push for Northern VA local meetups has been nice for folks like me, but again, these are not fixing the core issue: most folks live too far away for the more regular, smaller happenings that fuel the core participation that it sounds like you're asking for at Infoage. So, what does that mean? Do we all move closer? Obviously not, so that means working with the geographically available membership. Do you motivate more of the local user-base to show up and do more? Are you actively seeking to grow the membership to supplement this? Why aren't those local folks aren't already engaged to the threshold you ascribe to be club-like at present? And most importantly, what level of participation is the goal here? Thanks for listening, -Alexander 'Z' Pierson PS: Forgive the sidebar, but can we please *please* leave the AI summarizations off this list-serve? I'm here to talk to people, not listen to the hallucinations of an algorithm trying in vain to re-process nuance. On Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 11:39:06 AM EDT, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote: Might be good to do the opposite and say what you would like thats not currently happening. There was one group visit to the National Cryptologic Museum many years ago. Have been some local get togethers for a meal and whatever that aren't really the group but group members. These are nice but need additional people to organize. Problem with any group is only a few people want to organize things and they get burned out. All I know of is the workshops, fetivus year end party, and occasional calls for special help. Also docent for museum and VCF east help may be concidered part of club. On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 10:13:19AM -0400, Benjamin Krein via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
As a new-ish member who ends up lurking more than participating, I wholeheartedly agree with what Ian just said. It's hard to know how to be part of the VCF-MA/MARCH "club" & what that means. Other than Festivus or volunteering for support are there other "club" functions, meetings, gatherings, etc.?
Ben
On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 10:05 AM Ian Litchfield via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Regardless of what we call ourselves.
The elephant in the room here is still apparent, and this is my opinion (I am sure many have seen it as well.)
We have not really acted as a club in a long time.
Besides Festivus, when is the last time we did anything club like? People show up to the Swap and leave immediately after many ignoring our post event workshops. The same 5 or so people show up to workshops monthly, barring the one right before VCF East which always has a higher turnout. Very few newcomers appear to stick around, and if they do they just lurk. How many are registered in the list again?
Hell it took me about a year to figure out how to even “join” the club because no information was out about how to get involved. I was told to talk to someone and wait for a phone call, which took over 6 months to come in. From what I have gathered, we have always regarded it as “If you are on the list, you are in” but that is a terrible way, especially for an organization that has grown to our size, as people have put it to keep a member log.
We want to grow the local community here, do some outreach, fund fixing the warehouse to protect our artifacts, and eventually expand our museum and assist the other local groups on campus at InfoAge. All of which requires having an active and informed local membership.
We are not renaming the organization here, not even the list. Specifically it is proposed to rename and restructure the local chapter that handles the local events, local fund raising, local museum, local warehouse, local artifacts, local workshops, etc.. Did I mention Local?
-Ian L.
On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 09:04 Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
We are, or were created as one in 2015, an extension/chapter/whathaveyou of VCF National.
We don’t necessarily need to remain that, but that is what we are at the moment.
Tony Bogan
On Oct 29, 2024, at 8:39 AM, Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
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-- - Benjamin Krein