[TheForge] Re: how many? (Not so very OT)

[Mike]

schade> How many Forum members does it take to change a light bulb?

Not altogether OT. It's a fair if rather over-long metaphor for what
happens when people try to get things done by talking about them in a
completely open forum.

Compare: http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/alien/bulb-mit.html

where there's support of a largish institution.  There's just a much
foofoorah but at the end they have a lot of people doing interesting
stuff.  If you want to change a light bulb, you want to end up with a
bunch of enthusiastic folks doing neat stuff with adequate funds.  You
don't want to end up with a bun fight.

So: If I were lead hand in organizing a large ironwork meet [1], I
would look first for 2 or 3 sympatico colleagues and second, for a
patron, a patron in whose interest it would be to see it all work.

A huge multinational corp is too big to care unless the CEO's
wife/brother/son/daughter/... is your lover/wife/sister-in-law/....

A very small corp is, well, too small.  Some of the folks on this list
own/are very small corps.

Educational institutions might be great but most are unused to the
kind of um...  untidiness blacksmiths engender. :-)

So how about businesses like Harbor Freight or Princess Auto? [2] How
about state agricultural schools? [3] How about [you think of some
possibilities.]  Such an entity acting as a patron might be able to
offer a serviced, sheltered, insured venue.  They might be able to use
their business connections to get others to provide some of the
infrastructure such as bleachers, tents, compressors, net access or
extra insurance.  They might be able to handle some of the admin load
for those aspects.

So the trick would be to identify some candidates and then persuade
one of them that they would benefit -- in sales, community relations,
advertising or whatever -- from being associated in a very visible way
with the project.

Or maybe I have delusions of bright-idea grandeur.

FWIW,

- Mike


[1] Which I'm not and won't be.  I can't praise highly enough the work
    of Wayne Jay, Brad Allen and the other supporters & volunteers who
    put together the splendidly successful CanIron V.  I don't have
    the patience or the skills so I'm grateful for those who do.

[2] Say what? A thousand tool users will *pay* to come to our site?

[3] We have tractors, combines and a practicum in the General Theory of
    Damp Dirt.  What's a little soot?

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^