Save the Date! Give & Get Social - 12/10 End of Year Party

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kepPNW
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Re: Save the Date! Give & Get Social - 12/10 End of Year Par

Post by kepPNW » December 16th, 2017, 2:05 pm

justpeachy wrote:
Guy wrote:The event seemed to have changed to have more of a Trail Keepers than Oregon Hikers feel/emphasis to it, was that the intent?
Attendance was pretty low at the Oregon Hikers Meet n Deet last year so we tried a new format this year.
Curious whether folks felt attendance was up or down this year? (IOW, was last year the anomaly or signaling a trend?)
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Re: Save the Date! Give & Get Social - 12/10 End of Year Par

Post by justpeachy » December 16th, 2017, 4:29 pm

Although I don't have a head count, attendance was definitely up this year. :D

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Re: Save the Date! Give & Get Social - 12/10 End of Year Par

Post by Guy » December 16th, 2017, 6:58 pm

justpeachy wrote:Although I don't have a head count, attendance was definitely up this year. :D
Again not a criticism but apart from our own little group the only people I knew from Oregon Hikers (appart from organizers) that were there were Jim (Seamus), Don, Matt & Kevin. I don't know if attendance was up or down but the number of people from the Meet & Deet days was definitely down..
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Re: Save the Date! Give & Get Social - 12/10 End of Year Par

Post by bobcat » December 19th, 2017, 9:54 am

I've only been to a handful of these gatherings, and I arrived late to this one, but I'd say both Guy and Cheryl are correct, i.e. more people than last year, but if you just want to focus on one particular subgroup, fewer of the "old guard" (2008 -2015?) Forum posters who used to be the majority in these gatherings. There were more younger people, including families with young children. Some of these were new forum users or lurkers; there were way more TKO volunteers present than in the past as well as most of the TKO crew leaders and crew leaders in training.

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Re: Save the Date! Give & Get Social - 12/10 End of Year Par

Post by Bosterson » December 19th, 2017, 11:40 am

justpeachy wrote:
Guy wrote:The event seemed to have changed to have more of a Trail Keepers than Oregon Hikers feel/emphasis to it, was that the intent?
But this year we also placed an emphasis on fundraising for TKO so that we can keep running the forum and field guide, as well as carry out TKO's mission.
To answer your question, Guy, this is basically the reason I didn't go. Last year's event already had way too much of a TKO presence (almost none of those people participate here, so I don't think of them as part of this "community"), and as Bobcat noted, the "old guard" (ie, people I am likely to know and have hiked with) don't really show up anymore. Having to sit through a TKO fundraiser was the nail in the coffin.
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Re: Save the Date! Give & Get Social - 12/10 End of Year Par

Post by Guy » December 19th, 2017, 12:47 pm

Thanks for the feed back folks, I agree with the comments below, seems it comes down to the fact that outside of the organizers there seems to be very little crossover between the regular users of Oregon Hikers and TKO, hence 2 quite different groups of people.

Re the "Old guard" not showing up any more I would like to add that 2016 wasn't really a fair judgement on them, considering the weather and road conditions we were having in December 2016 and even with that lower turnout I'm going to guess that there were at least twice as many of this "OH subgroup" as there was this year. It could be argued that attendance dropped when we left Start Street Pizza!

Anyway perhaps it's just time for the "old guard" to leave Middle Earth ;)
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Re: Save the Date! Give & Get Social - 12/10 End of Year Par

Post by justpeachy » December 20th, 2017, 9:12 am

Bosterson wrote:Having to sit through a TKO fundraiser was the nail in the coffin.
Don't forget there was always a fundraising aspect to the event before (selling raffle tickets and calendars). This year was the same but with the addition of the silent auction, which was unobtrusive. ;)

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Re: Save the Date! Give & Get Social - 12/10 End of Year Par

Post by bobcat » December 21st, 2017, 7:29 am

Cheryl is correct, but for years TKO was stuttering along fairly anemically (my words) so the fundraising/trail advocacy aspect may not have been so obvious. In the future, if the organization continues to grow, there will be a much larger contingent of TKO volunteers at the event, I suspect. However, everyone is welcome, whether you're member of TKO or not, whether you contribute or not. Just give your trail buddies a kick in the pants and tell them to come!

By the way, some of the "old guard" are actually TKO members (I'm not going to "out" them as they may be ostracized as traitors or something)!!! I also heard of some good exchanges between Forum users and trail crew members, one of which will be reflected in an article in the next newsletter.

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