Re: NW House Filk proposal- please reply

I thought I'd share with you a few things discovered by my lady and I over the last few years of running our house filks.

1. The holidays are horrible for setting up circles except if you go for a "Party/Circle". For instance we have had a circle on New Years Eve for the last 4 years. This has been successful.
2. Avoid 3 day weekends. They sound tempting, but many people already have special plans for these way ahead of time.
3. Don't try to get everyone to agree on a date. It doesn't work. We tried to do this for a year and somehow we ended up last on everyone's priority list. The result was small to non-existant circles. Set the date and DO it. If people find they miss it, they'll schedule the next one in.
4. Corallary 1 to #3: Schedule it WELL ahead of time and advertise it! If people don't know or it's too close they'll find too many conflicts to attend. I always announce on filk and alt.music.filk at least week ahead of time.
5. Corallary 2 to #3: Schedule it on a regular basis. If you want it to grow it needs to be regular. If you're the center of a large well-connected group, irregular circles will work. However, smaller groups benefit from the regular meetings.
6. Food: You pretty much have two choices on food, a) the pre-circle meet at a restaurant or b) snacks. If you try to pot-luck dinner, it will distract from the circle. People will be late and adding food to the table after the circle has started tends to distract people. If you start very early (just past noon, say) and continue into the night this might work, however it hasn't for us. An Evening filk should start after food and start promptly or you can end up trying to start at 9:30 or 10:00 (don't laugh, it happenned).
7. On food again, pot-luck probably means the host will provide more than anyone for food. Again this is hard experience. If you're prepared for this it's OK, but the reality is some people think a bag of chips (medium sized at that) constitutes a dinner pot-luck contribution. And some people just won't get message that it's a pot luck and show up food-less. And some people are living on ramen... So know what ou're getting into ahead of time.

I wish you all the luck with your circle. If I can help in any way let me know... 'Sides my lady and I want a circle happening in the Seattle area so we can visit when we're in the area.

Good Luck,
Douglas Received on 10/24/96