P3D A few good men - Part II

["Dr. George A. Themelis" <DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Two key ingredients for getting people to attend meetings, IMO, are
good programs & competitions.

Finding programs that make the meetings worth attending is a challenge
and it is in the hands of the "Program Director" (some clubs have the
Vice-President do that).  

Some people are opposed to the idea of photographic competitions, but once 
you see this working, you realize that it can be great fun.  It is like an 
"open projector", only much more exciting.  The idea is to learn and have fun.
The more people participate, the better it is.  We have people in our club 
that don't take stereo pictures (like spouses of members) but come (even 
without their spouses) because they like seeing stereo images and listening 
to the judges commenting on them.

Finally, we have the newsletter.  A club does not need to have a newsletter
or this can be as simple as an announcement of the next meeting.  But, IMO,
a good newsletter should talk about what happened in the last meeting for
those that were not able to attend, and introduce the next meeting's
program and motivate people to attend.  Plus, educate the members on stereo
issues and carry local stereo-related news.

Going back to Tom Martin and the MPLS/SP area, I don't know the details but
I'll speculate that Tom, who carries the only title ("NSA regional director"),
also is carrying out all the work for this activity, acting as the President, 
Program Director, Competitions Director, etc.  Imagine this being converted 
to a regular club.  Tom will still be the President and can maintain one key 
work assignment (Program Director perhaps).  But now he also gets to assign 
work to other members.  The work is not hard and it can be fun.  I am sure 
there will be people willing (or convinced, if needed!) to carry on some of 
these assignments under the (close?) supervision of the President.  Once the
club is up and running, if the meetings go smoothly and the attendance is
high, I am sure more people will like to get involved.

In photo-3d there are at least 6-7 current Presidents or past Presidents of
stereo clubs.  I wonder if they have an opinion on this subject.

-- George Themelis


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