Love For the Hobby


D&J RailRoad

D&J RailRoad

Professor of HO
If you were in a club (of any kind) and were tasked with developing the facet of the club member's Love for the hobby, how would you approach that?
 
You need to give the club members 'purpose'; hands-on community interaction with whatever activity the club is involved with.
It's no fun sitting on the sidelines and being a janitor after a meeting is over. Free beer isn't the answer, either.
Total community involvement leads to a sense of purpose with health and wellness.

Just my humble opinion.
 
It's a tough assignment to try to get my arms around.
I think it might have some kind of focus on highlighting individual members involvement in the hobby though the club periodic newsletter. Everybody likes to read about their personal accomplishments in a published article. This could be accomplished through members baring their soul a bit for other members to get to know them better.
 
The clubs I've belonged to have both functioned on attraction vs. promotion. The members we have (had) were there because they already had a love for the hobby. If that doesn't stick, they end up disappearing, and we always felt that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. We have attracted people who visited us during Trainfest and other open houses, and if the enthusiasm doesn't stick neither do they. Now me personally, I've taught and mentored new members, but I've never had to instill a love of the hobby. It was already there.
 
Well said Espeefan. The model railroad club Espeefan refers to is pure perfection and scale modeling at its best with the "Love of the Hobby" that shows the minute you walk down the stairwell into the club's layout room.

Greg
 
I belong to a fishing club that has over 800 dues paying members and at the two annual meetings it's lucky to have 100 members (including significant others) show up even with the FREE BEER and a lunch.

Greg
 
This is a kind of club right here in ModelRailroadForums (.com). So, here I am and yet have no idea what I'm supposed to do to 'develop a facet of the members' (or member's, if you mean a particular member) love for the hobby' ...
Other than voting for who will be president, secretary and treasurer, or to having no formal structure whatsoever, this is a hobby, not a meeting of the board of a detergent Co..... Have fun. Be willing to learn. Help out. Be nice...Those are the facets of a hobby club member. But 98% of us already know this intuitively, anyway....So, still not sure what OP is getting at, if not this...
 
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D&J RailRoad said:
If you were in a club (of any kind) and were tasked with developing the facet of the club member's Love for the hobby, how would you approach that?
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Having been in Amatuer Radio for many years , they face this same issue. The solution was contests and for people who do want to participate in contests you have contests , you just can't call it a contest. You'd be surprised how much money people will spend to win a contest. You have to have a small enough number of categories to keep it a challenge and large enough so that small guys , compete with small guys and big guys with big guys , teams against teams . They all need to think they have a chance. And you need enough of them happening often enough to keep people interested.

Milestone awards also help. They can be mailed or just .pdf on a server to print at the participants leisure.

And if you can cultivate the notion that they are saving the world or performing a public service that also helps , in the short run.

It also doesnt hurt to give them an excuse to spend 3 weeks on an island most people have never heard of, away from their "friends and family" . Some seem to really like that .

Competion and Collecting is what really gets people hooked . It also helps if you have enemies ( they help hold you together) . Whether your collecting trains or countries. The biggest problem with trains is you don't have a huge organization pulling you along on a national level .

Of course the Corona virus has made it difficult if not impossible to do these sorts of things lately.
 
D&J RailRoad said:
Yeah, Field day was last weekend..
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Of course once a year is not nearly enough to keep people engaged. It has to be once a month or even weekly.

Usually with trains that means scratch building competitions , photo contests , raffles , that sort of thing. Unfortunately the results tend to be judged subjectively , and a lot of times only the winners are happy.

The real trick is to get people to compete against themselves and improve . And right now just starting a project is a victory in itself.

The virus really puts a damper on things and I suspect that its going to go on for quite a while . The ground is just to fertile for it to go away. And the worst may be yet to come.
 
D&J RailRoad said:
Yeah, Field day was last weekend..
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Well, you didn't say you need an answer quickly. I wouldn't have put so much thought into it otherwise.

pickle.jpg
 
Most clubs have a mission statement to show purpose and their intentions. Unfortunately we have people that come into our club that want to learn yet feel intimidated by some of the stuff others have done. Try to explain that some have talent in some areas but not other. A club can be a melting pot of information you just have to ask. I for one have problems with buildings and shy away from them yet other areas are fine. So I ask and learn.
 
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