Real life activism

Have you ever created a forum (or participated in) a forum that promotes real life activism?

I'm toying with an expansion of my latest project (a blog) to include a forum. The forum wouldn't be primarily real life activism/meet-ups, but it could potentially be a big part of it. I was hoping for some general advice from someone who had experience in that arena.

 

To build up a successful meeting, i think, that a community is necessary to create the interest to meet each other. For this, the core community members (those who "live" in that forum if you know what i mean ) should be at least >50 imho.
they must have some good reason to move to a meeting point to see each other and they should of course know each other a bit.

 

That makes sense.

What I'm thinking of would be, more specifically, political activism. So it would be for a "cause" and the crowd would be pretty serious.

 

I have participated in meetups and events from forums I've belonged to. Not on my own forum though (yet).

On one forum, about 50 people from across the U.S flew to North Carolina for a Expo relative to our niche. The site owner had a table and was selling caps, t-shirts, and other paraphernalia with the site's logo and URL.

A couple of us flew in on a Friday and went out to dinner. The rest of the group came on Saturday and we actually had a get-together at one of their houses. On Sunday was the Expo and on Monday we went to the Raleigh Zoo for fun. LOL
It was a nice little trip and was really fun.

Other times I've met up for coffee and/or lunch with some local members. No reason other than to just meet some new friends and make some small talk

To answer your question more specifically, I have not participated in a forum that really "promotes" it other than the one that has the yearly get-together for the Expo.
But I do think it adds a great sense of community for the members that participate in meetups because they then create friendships and the forum becomes a place for them to just chat (via PM) and to discuss on the forums. Now that I know some of the members from the site I've been referring to, it's a much more personable experience when visiting and posting on the forum.

 

yeah, but at least i think, the idea of a community meeting should exist, when the board is a few months/years old and not the opposite case (is that correct english? )

 

The age of the forum/community shouldn't matter; the development should though. For example, a gigantic community can emerge in a matter of months. Just because it isn't very old isn't a good reason to not have real-life meet-ups and such.

Would you agree?

 

I can see it from both perspectives, though I'd tend to agree with Disaster. However, the idea I had was a site that was actually strongly centered on political activism anyway, so - in my mind at least - it was an exception to the rule.

 

The best strategy perhaps is to start with local meetups, i.e. members from one city, for example, meet together for a cup of coffee. In the Philippines, these things are called EBs - eyeballs - and almost all of the big forums in the country used this technique to gather new members and spur on the older ones to continue contributing.

 

Interesting. So it's fairly common there?

 

Yep, and its one way that the forum owners keep members interested in the forum. Almost all big forums contain dedication section or at least threads for "EB's".