I've been thinking about these topics for awhile now - particularly since I talked in the winter about my friend Sarra's experience in Ealdormere, with the tiny experienced group that was convinced they were the only active members, and the people they were ignoring.

I realized then that one of my friend Sarra's passions, and gifts, is in community-building; drawing in new people suits her extrovert self.

I'm realizing that this is a gift, because not everyone does it.

I'm also realizing that some groups survive in spite of themselves, in spite of their attrition and loss of members, simply because there's a large enough pool of people to draw  from.

Insulae Draconis desperately wants to grow into a principality. Everyone agrees that we need more numbers to do so - members, and particularly fighters.

But we don't have a cohesive recruitment plan, to do that drawing-in.

We 'compete' with a number of other activities, particularly LARPers and reenactors. (The latter are less direct competition, because they're doing something slightly different.)

And we want particularly to emphasise that this is not just an 'American' club, but one that has roots here in Europe - and draw in more people with 'native' accents.

Recruitment periodically drifts through discussion on newsgroups. Since it resurfaced in the spring there's been a flurry of demos this summer. All of a sudden, everyone and their brother is doing a demo.

The trouble is...I'm not convinced that demos always work.

I admit my bias: at a gut level, I don't enjoy being stared at by mundanes, like some sideshow entertainment - it makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Being stared at when everyone is in similar funny clothes, as a herald, is a completely different matter. So I'm at best a reluctant participant.

It takes a lot of effort to assemble an attractive presentation: pavilion or sunshade, table with crafts, cooking demo with non-modern plates and pots and food, clothing and accessories. I was reminded of this as I humped kit back and forth to a demo site last weekend. (I took part as a favour for a friend, thinking that more people had agreed to come. Wrong. Sigh.)

But I'm not convinced that we can provide very much 'education' in the five-ten minutes that mundanes come to stand and stare at us, even with all our nice kit.

And I'm definitely not convinced that letting the kids play 'hit the knight' in armour is educational, though the little beggars clearly enjoy it.

So I'm realizing that cultivating new people, like new-off-the-street, is possibly not one of my strengths or my interests.

But being a helpful soul to the person who has said 'yes, I want to come to an event, can I travel with you?' is much, much easier, and more rewarding to me. Once that door is open, I'm  quite happy to support a newcomer.

It's a bit like different approaches in sales: there's the people who enjoy the challenge of cold calls, and the people who are better at 'clinching' once the customer is interested, and still others in 'customer care'. I think I'm closer to 'customer care' than I am to cold-calling.

Just some thoughts.