Attendance - what should you expect from your IPC members?

When people join a club, it’s reasonable to assume that they want to participate in activities that the club presents, become better informed about the club’s topic, and to meet people with the same interests. But, in the online world, it’s easy to join a group and walk away from it or watch it from a distance, becoming a ‘lurker.’ In the context of group membership though, lurkers are takers, not givers. They’re not interested in contributing to the group and helping it evolve. They very occasionally watch it from the virtual sidelines. If you’re new to an online group, lurking is usually acceptable at first, because it’s assumed that you’re catching up with the group’s conversations. However, it also comes with the promise that as a good member, they’ll start posting intelligent and insightful questions or comments in ongoing threads to encourage more conversation and idea-sharing.

But in a face-to-face club such as an IPC, the lurker’s role is more than just passively observing from the sidelines. They’re a factor that can be fatal to its success. Lurkers contribute to membership bloat. Bloat represents inflated membership numbers.  Bloat deceives new participants into thinking that the group more active than it really is. It fools the group managers into thinking if they do something novel, they can get those members to participate. The truth is:  they’re deadwood, and they’re not going to show up, no matter what you do.

What do you reasonably expect from members to participate in the club? How do you encourage participation?

Reasonable expectations

Assuming you are defining the minimum membership guidelines for your IPC (refer to “Finding the right members for your IPC”), start with reflecting on the purpose of your IPC (refer to “Why create an informal private club”). Invariably, part of the reason for your IPC is to encourage people with the same interest to associate. It’s reasonable to expect members to get out and associate. If a member isn’t participating, they’re not contributing to the club.

Granted, you don’t know folk’s schedules, so thinking that members are going to go to every club function is unreasonable. As an IPC leader, you offer opportunities. Every member should have the opportunity to join an activity. So, what is a reasonable attendance rate? I personally have considered using a 25% marker. If I’m offering 32 events during the year, I think it’s reasonable to ask members to attend at least eight of those events. This way, if some programming is not interesting, members can fall back on other suitable activities within the club, and not be in danger of running afoul of the club’s guidelines.

Set up the expectation that members don’t have to attend all events, but that they can pick and choose what they want to attend. Use empathy and be alert. There might be good reason that a member cannot hit the minimum number of events (new parenthood for instance). On the other hand, the problem may not be the members, but with what you’re offering. Both of these scenarios need you to use judgment on how to proceed.

Encouraging participation

You should consider a variety of events that are suitable for your IPC. When you’re first starting out, pick out at least three different event types. I suggest starting out with a casual meet (refer to “Adding aCasual Meet to your IPC”), and branching out from there, guiding on the needs of your IPC. If you’re finding that people are not enthused about what you’re offering, be open to member suggestions, and be very willing to act on them if they are reasonable. Also, surveys are great to see where your member’s interests are now. Be cautious that you use surveys sparingly, maybe no more than once every other month, and no more than ten questions. Also, if you act on someone’s idea, it gives them a sense of ownership in the club.

Being an enthusiastic leader and event host also helps. People thrive off excitement and a positive atmosphere, so set yourself up for success. Talk to people, make introductions, and be part of the event. Don’t nervously buzz around like a busy body, or overly structure your event. Allow for some organic flow and progression around your event. This helps to make your events memorable, and sets up the desire for repeat attendance.

Conclusion

Be reasonable with your members. You’ll need to create some structure and set expectations, but keep the bar low enough to where participation is fun and not an overbearing hassle. Use good judgement if members run into participation obstacles, or if your events are not as appealing as they should be.

Setting up the programming for your IPC

Once you have your IPC up and running with a handful of events planned and completed, you’ll want to put more meaning or organization behind what the IPC is offering its members. If you’re wanting to be creative, coming up with the club’s event offerings is one of the most creative opportunities you can enjoy. This is also an opportunity to steer the IPC in a meaningful direction. As with any club activity or action, creating the club’s programming should be performed by the club’s steering committee. If the club is large enough to support it, a separate Activity or Programs committee could also be created to handle creating and managing club programming.

If you’re the only one creating the programming, you’ll need to have a calendar on hand. At this point I’ll tell you not to over-commit yourself. If you don’t have assistance, you need to figure out how much you can do and still have a quality product. If you want to expand your offerings, you’ll need to ask for help. As a note, never ‘volun-tell’ people what to do. This is a sure way of turning off your members, and killing your credibility. Instead, tell people about what you’d like to plan and talk it up. Always be open to feedback. Also, empathize that they have a stake in this and you’d like their ideas. With any luck, you may find your IPC’s future steering committee!

Your programming should fit in with your club’s strategy (refer to the “Creating a strategy for your IPC’ post). The events need to be designed to accomplish the club’s overall strategic goals. Creative use of events can be designed to help with this. Also, realize that some events we’ve covered so far in this blog may not be appropriate for your IPC. While a supper club would be great for social or professional IPCs, it’s probably not appropriate for a hobby or certain accountability IPCs. If you’re at a loss, casual meets are always good starting events. Even then, you’ll need to begin formulating events that propel your IPC in the desired direction.

As an example, let’s say you’ve just formed the Midtown Coders Bloc IPC. Your club’s strategy is to network local professional programmers, and to keep folks up-to-date with trends in the industry. You can establish a monthly casual meet to allow your members to just mingle and talk, and speaks to your networking strategy. Also, a member knows someone that is a jobs recruiter, and they’re willing to give a bi-monthly talk about local programming opportunities in exchange for a chance to meet and speak with IPC members. Another member loves hands-on programming, and is more than willing to host a quarterly discussion (we’ll talk about this add-on later) on certain programming topics. Both the recruiter and programming lover speak to the trends portion of your IPC strategy. This serves as your basic IPC programming. From there, the sky is the limit, if you have enough energy and volunteers to go around.

Adding a Casual Meet to your IPC

We’ve talked about add-on events with some structure, salons, cocktail parties, and supper clubs. How about an add-on event without any real structure? Something where you can stake out some space and let the event happen. Casually. Try a Casual Meet (not to be confused with hooking up!). This is probably the easiest type of event you can schedule. The huge advantage of the Casual Meet is that it goes with every basic type of IPC. Social, hobby, professional, or field, it fits everything. In a way, it’s the bean-bag chair of IPC events.

What exactly is a Casual Meet? Here’s the simple explanation – it’s an unstructured meeting to allow people (IPC members) to meet in a causal environment. While it’s easy to run, you’ll need to do some prep work ahead of time. It can be held anywhere that has space for people to move about and talk. My gaming group has a causal meet at a stand-alone coffee shop that treats us like gold. Then again, gamers are well known for their sugar and caffeine addictions. It’s a match made in heaven.

The hardest part is finding a place to meet. You can do it at home, but a house is a private space that is an unknown for some folks. Unless I’ve been to someone’s house more than a couple times, I find that I’m not completely comfortable. I suggest finding a quiet space at a coffee shop, restaurant or similar business. I whole-heartily recommend coffee shops, because they’re laid back and/or generally quiet places that don’t get too upset if some folks don’t partake. Be careful with restaurants. I find a certain tension exists if you have folks attend your event that have no intention of eating and drinking something. It’s taking away from the restaurant’s business, and some places become squirrelly about it eventually. I suggest talking to the owner or a manager before you plan a casual meet at their business. This way you can feel whether they would welcome your club’s presence or if they seem to be dubious.

Casual meets are just that, a causal meeting. Don’t try to impose a structure or force conversation, but do make introductions between people who may not know each other, or with new folks who are attending this as a first event. As a matter of fact, casual meets are a great first event for new club members. Talk should be organic and free-flowing, and as an event organizer all you’re doing is being the welcome-wagon and event closer. Then you’ll realize that your casual meet was the easiest and most fun event you’ve run yet.

IPC Inspirations: Tabletop Gaming

An easy and very popular IPC to create is one based on any form of gaming. In this post, I’ll concentrate on two forms of gaming; board gaming and table top roleplaying games. In future posts, I’ll write about other popular games such as bridge, caroom, chess, go and others. Also, this is a subject I can speak to personally, so I’m excited to be writing on it. As I mentioned in "The Beginning," I currently run a roleplaying games Meetup group, and it inspired my interest in organizing groups as a whole.

Gaming as an IPC

Gaming has long been presented as an open group activity; you go to a game store, or find a Meetup or Facebook site, see if there are any people playing the games you're interested in and get a tip on who’s playing when, and if they’re taking players. You might find a group interested in taking you, but often, it’s not an ideal match. There are several reasons for the mismatch, which often includes conflicting personalities.Chances are high for sub-optimal experience. An IPC could be the remedy for folks looking for a better experience with tabletop games.

The games we play
If you're considering a gaming hobby IPC, you'll want to make sure you can find local people who play the same games that you do. As board gaming is concerned, some of the more popular titles can probably hold their own, such as Settlers of Catan or Diplomacy, but you may want to opt for a general type of game if you like playing some of the lesser known titles. German-style games would be a popular pick, as well as board wargames like Squad Leader (which could probably stand on its own).  You can also fit board (or rod) hockey and similar games in this category too.

Speaking for roleplaying game IPCs, a club form around Dungeons & Dragons can easily stand on its own as well as Pathfinder. Certain genre or rules drive RPGs would also do very well, such as games based on the works of HP Lovecraft, which has always had a devoted niche of players and fans, and well as the FATE generic roleplaying game system, which also has a devoted following.

Caution needs to be exercised when deciding on a game IPC. Some popular games sweep the industry like a storm, and then fade away just as quickly. Unless you're looking at a game that has been in print for a while, and still hold its popularity, you may want to look at a specific genre instead.

Activities are key
It goes without saying that your membership has joined to play games, so your basic event programming would revolve around  Game Days. Game Days  mean many things to different gamers, but in my experience, it a block of time divided into sessions. People will offer to host a table, or be a game master (if an RPG). Other interpretations of a Game Day can range from more or less structured.

Gamers also love to talk and replay their past games, so allowing for this to happen would be a great boon to a gaming IPC. You might consider adding casual meetings (I'll cover this later as an IPC add-on) to your event programming. Casual meetings (or Casual Meets as I like calling them) are simple gatherings at coffee shops or other low-key establishments that offer a relaxed and preferably quiet atmosphere. The goal is to simple mingle, talk, and build relationships.

Other add-on events would take some forethought, but they could be customized to fit your IPC's needs. Salons would be simple, the topics can discuss different aspects of the game. We'll explore more possibilities in upcoming blog posts.

Membership
This can be a sticky issue with IPC organizers and gamers alike. Both aspects of the gaming hobby attract both personable and non-so personable people. Tabletop RPG has had the notion that its players are all male and play these games their basements. While this stereotype died years ago, for the most part, some gamers still lend to the illusion that this image is still alive and well. As an IPC organizer, you need to have a very clear concept for your gaming IPC, and the members you'd like to take part. Re-read "Basic Ideas for Recruiting Members to your IPC" and "Finding the right members for your IPC" to start formulating a membership strategy.

A gaming IPC can be one of the easiest and rewarding clubs to create. If you want your gaming to rise to a higher level, consider this avenue.