Fair-weather User Group Attendees
I have a request/suggestion for the various User Group Managers out there: I'd like the software raffles to be "weighted" based on participation. My reasoning for this is below, and it may come across a bit like a rant because, well, it is. :)
Last week I attended the Sierra MMUG, which I try to catch regularly (along with 3 or 4 other groups in my area). It was the semi-annual "software raffle", for which Adobe graciously supplied us with some very nice goodies to raffle off.
Now, being a regular attendee of this group, I have a pretty good idea of a) who attends each month and b) the average number of attendees. As seems to be commonplace with user group meetings when a big software raffle is involved, the attendance this month was triple the normal amount! One of the "new faces" won the software raffle, and several folks left at the intermission, missing half of the featured presentation! (The raffle was done during the intermission.)
In short, that's disrespectful. User Group Managers work hard to make sure food is available, a location has been secured, promotion is done, and that everything runs smoothly. Presenters work equally hard researching topics, preparing slides, and writing up code samples to share with the rest of their developer community.
While I like to see bigger turnouts at our meetings, and I'm all for encouraging growth at our user groups, this "dine and dash" style behavior seems to be pretty common, and I don't think it's really helping anyone (aside from whomever won the raffle). Additionally, seeing a "fair-weather attendee" win the raffles consistently can take away some motivation from those folks that are more involved in said user groups. (I've witnessed the same thing happen at other groups recently as well.)
Here's what I propose...
Rather than each person putting in 1 ticket (or business card, or whatever) for the raffle, make it a weighted system, about like so:
- Each attendee gets 1 entry into the raffle.
- For each meeting someone has already attended that calendar year, he/she gets one extra entry in the raffle. So if I've been to 2 prior meetings, I'd get to put 2 more tickets in for the raffle.
- For each presentation someone has given that calendar year, he/she gets (for example) another 3 entries.
Given that most meetings already take an attendance, it should not be too much additional work to implement such a system. My hope is that it will help reward folks that are actively participating in their local developer communities, while also encouraging more people to contribute down the line. While this varies from group to group, sometimes finding guest presenters can be a big challenge; rewarding such folks with extra raffle tickets may be just the nudge that some folks need.
(At my local ColdFusion User Group meeting last week, another member mentioned something similar, and I thought it was a tremendous idea. However I didn't get permission to post his name, so I'll keep that info private for now.) If anyone else has feedback or comments, please share. And no, this is not my strategic plan to win all of the free software for myself. :)
Has anyone seen my soapbox? Oh here it is... :)
-n
Point is, I completely understand the sentiment. Yet at the same time, I see the "other side". As a meeting planner, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. It takes some sort of "motivation" to get butts in the seats, but you risk alienating the "regulars" who feel disenchanted when someone who walks in off the street wins the prize.
The NorCalFlex UG is implementing this policy this month. I have actually been very disappointed in the lack of participation when there are no giveaways. Given that, the policy we are implementing is that to be eligible you must have attended 2 of the last 5 meetings. To me, it's akin to panhandling, taking a handout and in exchange giving nothing back.
Also, we give double tickets for those that attend meetings with less then 10 people - that rarely happens though, we get people coming to presentations they aren't really interested in because they think that others won't attend! My reverse psychology works....MUHAHAHAHAHA
Cheers,
Davo
Last night we had our best attended meeting for Fire On The Bay, the fireworks group I run and you so kindly attend via connect or in person. I was not giving any software away this month, but I did last month so it is a nice comparison. Last month we had almost 30 people show up to learn about Fireworks CS4 and to get the grand prize of CS3 Web Premium. Then to my surprise we had 40 people show up and 10 people show up online from as far away as Australia to watch the presentation. So the only thing I can conclude is that our topic this month was very interesting. So that might be our issue at large, maybe we need to try and get really good topics that our membership wants to hear about. What do you think?
However, I do have to agree with Luke that it isn't actually the raffle that drives attendance. While some of the folks were no doubt there for the prizes, we have had meetings before where I give away the big software package but don't talk about anything important and have had only a few people there. On the other side, I've had meetings where we give nothing away and have spectacularly good attendance. I'd like to think that the unusually high attendance this past month was due to the fact that I did a lot better job than normal of advertising the meeting and that the topic was of interest to folks.
That said, I do think that rewarding folks like yourself who not only show up every month but (much more important) are willing to actually present is a great idea. It's something that all of us managers struggle with. I tried the whole keeping-attendance thing and it didn't work, but I like the idea of having a physical box with actual tickets instead, so you can be the first to know that that is how we will handle things henceforth.
To be honest, I didn't even notice that folks left after the raffle. I guess the other change in policy is that the raffle will have to be held at the end of the meeting from now on to get people to stick around. :)
Basically, no one's entry from tonights meeting is in tonights draw.
We did this electronically, but you could just as easily do it with raffle tickets in a box.
We ran the software raffle over multiple months until we had a winner.
We collected names each month of attendees.
We drew from the list of eligible names just once, and the person drawn had to be present. There were no redraws!
After the draw, the names from tonight were added to the list for the draw next month.
No names are removed from month to month.
At the end of each six month period, we had a special draw where we would just keep drawing until we had a winner who was present. After this special draw, the list was cleared and tonights attendees were added for next months draw.
This rewarded people for coming back, and prevented the people who only showed up once from winning major prizes. They could always come back next month for a chance to win.
Our attendance figures went up last year when we did this, and have fallen this year when we did not do this. We will probably be reinstating it after this month.
However, I do not use attendance from the meeting that the drawing takes place. This way, if a bunch from one company show up for that one meeting, they are not entered. You do need to be present to win, so those that were signed up, repeat and keep coming back. Seems petty, but I agree with the post that it is disrespectful to show up just to win.
Interestingly, when Nolan came to speak at BACFUG, we had almost a completely new crowd of attendees for his "intro" topic than we normally get. And some of those are now coming to other meetings as well (Nolan comes back in July for part 2 of his CFC talk). That just shows how important it is to cater to a broad audience - and to accept that different topics will attract completely different audiences.
Getting members involved can be just plain hard tho'...