nwogeo.org

Your Steering Committee decided to try out traveling NWOGEO Meet N Eat events in place of the March & April monthly Findlay meet & eats.

The idea behind this is to make our presence seen throughout northwest Ohio, not just in 2 parts. This also could serve some folks who do not live close enough for a Maumee/Findlay meet & eat. Our nomadic event can be weekends or weeknights, but be sensitive to surrounding events. (i.e. no Fremont meet & eat on
the 2nd Wednesday of the month since that's when the Tiffin group meets and they are geographically close).

We have cancelled the Findlay meet & eat for March, instead we'll be in Bryan and April in Fremont. Findlay will resume in May, the 3rd Thursday of the month.

We also decided that we will reconvene the Findlay meet & eat in May, and at that point throw a discussion out on the forums about how the nomadic meet & eats worked.
At that time we can discuss again the low attendance at the Findlay meet & eat, what works for most of our members, other meet n eat concerns & needs.
At this time, NWOGEO Maumee Meet and Eats will stay as is...

Just a suggestion a few months ago in Leipsic we had a place called the uptown market and café open. They serve coffees and cappichino they also have deli meats and cheeses and serve sandwiches soups and salads there. The hours are 6 am to 7 pm Monday through Friday and 8 am to 4pm on Saturdays. They do have wifi there in the café maybe just a consideration for a place to try.

That's a great idea, Phil! Would you be willing to talk to the owners & maybe see about finding a date/time that would be when they're slightly less busy? As Suchanana said, we will reconvene in Findlay for the May meet & eat, but maybe we could have a nomadic one again in June if that's where the forum discussion leads us.

Jen I will go up next week and talk with the owners to see about June. Just need to have an idea if you would rather have this during the week or on a Saturday so I can talk with the owner about maybe having the place opened up just for our group for a few hours.

That's a great question. I'm not sure how many folks would be able to make it during the day during the week.....but if they would be willing to open for an evening, that's something different. See what they're willing to entertain, and let us know. Thanks for doing this!

I've got an idea maybe two months out of the year we could cancel the Maumee and Findlay M&E's and have a M&E in Bowling Green on the second Tuesday of the month. If it's such a great idea to have nomadic events let's cancel the Maumee M&E in March & April. Maybe the first Tuesday in March could be Sandusky maybe April could be Defiance. Just a suggestion. Maybe I'll write my suggestions on toilet paper.


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Andy, the steering committee got feedback from members at the holiday shindig and our goal is to offer more social opportunities to area cachers and we agreed that the "traveling" meet-n-eats could be various days and times rather than locked into the 3rd Thursday at 7:00pm... as i explained, it's a trial run, we'll evaluate it and take ALL the comments into account... we are not forgetting or closing or foregoing all Findlay meet n eats...

When we decided to try this out, we thought about doing the combined Findlay/Maumee meet & eat in BG again. The reason that was originally abandoned was that when we looked at who attended, it was about 9/10 northern (Maumee meet & eat) based folks, and 1/10 southern (Findlay meet & eat) based folks. We do have new faces in the southern part now. We will definitely throw Andy's idea up for discussion after the 2 trial nomadic events!

I see somebody created a meet and eat in Findlay on our regular night.

Now time for my rant...

If you want to move move the meet and eats, it would be appreciated that the people it affects the most have a little feedback. Sending a rep down all telling us "Oh by the way, we aren't having your event the next two months..." is kind of upsetting to the regular attendees. I propose that we move the April and May Toledo meet and eats to Shunk and Burgoon just to cover more locations.

I know I am just a newby by some standards, but I am looking at the nomadic events as a good thing. What I gathered with the M&E's is that it was designed to meet new chacers for food and fellowship, learn tricks of the trade and trade goodies. If we stay in the same areas all the time the only time we meet new chacers is the Mega events. I have learned NOWGEO is a covers a big area and not all people can make every m&e. Maybe it would be good for the one in Maumee to move to, I know a place in South Toledo that might do it.

I want this to be a fun hobby. I am still trying to learn about this so I apologize if I stepped on any toes. I don't know if it is against the rules for individual M&E's to spring up in isolated areas, or if central ohio is getting bigger with cachers than we can creat a central ohio group and take some strain off of the NW ohio group. I really don't mind getting together. I just want this hobby to be enjoyable, and I don't want to go the bash and be uncofortable asking to go chacing with someone. Let's leave the politics to the politicians and just have fun.

All opinions stated below are my own and in no way reflect those of the steering committee.

I guess I fail to see the issue here.

I went back 4 months, and the highest attendance was 7. October had 5 users.

There were only 4 users our of the 26 total attendees that only attended this once.

The group as a whole decided that it might be wise to migrate some of the monthly meet and eats around to see if they can draw some more members or attendance.

There are 2 users that were at every month and an additional 3 that made it to all but one - is there any super compelling reason one of those users couldn't list the event in the absence of the group listing it on the months it migrates out of the way?

On the months that it didn't get listed in time did no one attend?

I get it, it seems like the group as a whole is marginalizing your event. But, there is a desire to keep the number of events listed by the group to a reasonable manner, and there was feedback from the broader membership that it might make sense to move it. I could understand if you were regularly drawing new attendees, but as best as I can tell that isn't the case.

I suggest that in the couple of months where the second M&E moves around while they feel it out that one of the other regulars (Maybe trainnut or CindyLou) list the event in it's absence. Extra bonus points if you've not yet listed an event.

Again that's just my opinion.

Jason
(Who gets grumpier the older I get)