JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Important Open Discussion for 2006 and Beyond: Please Chime In!

John,

I think an interesting issue at hand is that I've never seen JPF as an internet based anything. Because I spent so much more of my time with members in person and/or dealing with non web activities like the music awards, the website is, to me, a simple supplement to everything else. I understand why you and others who spend their time on the boards see it differently, but we've proven that as active as some are here on the boards, that doesn't translate at all to the real world. Conversely, the folks who are the most active in the real world are rarely if ever active on this board (with the exception of a small handful of people). The fact that only 1 out of 4 or 5 current members are registered on the message boards makes it clear that this is a niche within the larger group. It would make life easier if folks all came here to network, but they do, and after 7+ years, it's clear they aren't going to any time soon. If 1 out of 5 current members are registered here, ironically less than 1 in 10 or maybe more like 1 in 20 or 30 of the regular message board users ever attend any real life events. So as indifferent as a group the entire membership is about the website, the folks on the website message boards are even more disinterested in chapters, music awards, roadtrips or anything else we do. I bet there aren't 200 people who take advantage (even occassionally) of both sides of that fence.

Because I agree that it's very tough even for well funded groups with paid staff to get people involved face to face regularly, it seemed the "event" approach of 3 or 4 total events per year is a better idea. It also hopefully will encourage folks who aren't as interested in meeting monthly or doing showcases etc.. a chance to get involved as a representative without having to bear the other burdens associated with a regular chapter today. We never have problems getting people to volunteer to start or run chapters. But literally only 1 in 50 ever do a single thing to move forward. I am not exaggerating. We had 150 new people offer to help start (or take over) a chapter and only about 3 of them ever did a single tangible thing to do so in the last go round we had with this. So people seem to want to be involved and we just need to figure out what it is they want to do or feel comfortable doing so we can take advantage of that interest. If running monthly meetings is too overwhelming for folks, then perhaps working to organize a couple events with months in between will be less intimidating. Plus, we could probably streamline the process so that new folks could have an outline of how to do each event from all the others who had gone before. And if we have more representation (i.e. similar to the US Congressional Districts) folks could actually attend multiple showcases or events if they wanted in a reasonable distance from their home. (Unless of course they live in Alaska or North Dakota).

As for our motto, it's really more of a fact than wishful thinking. We're all in this together.. whether we like it or not.. it seems better to work together for everyone's benefit than working alone or like some of the trolls and scam artists on the web, working against everyone.

Brian