Events

I'm no expert on throwing FF events but I've helped organize a few in San Francisco and figured I'd share what I've learned. Please add any ideas you might have!

Mailing List The FF events forum is great, but people don't check it enough. You need to form a local mailing list (with google groups or whatever) so people will get timely updates.

Planning You can toss around ideas for awhile, but note that someone needs to actually propose something concrete. If no one else does, it's up to you!

Venue The first successful meet-up we did was at Cheesecake Factory in San Francisco. I chose it because:
a. It's close to public transit;
b. Parking available;
c. Not too expensive;
d. It's a familiar enough place that people would feel comfortable going there. People are going to be shy about attending, especially in the beginning;
e. There's food;
f. There's alcohol;

I'm not saying all events should be at Cheesecake factory; just that the above factors are good ones to consider.

Time and date So far we've always met Sunday's at 4pm. I'm starting to think a little later might be better. Though too late and we could run into the dinner crowd rush.

Recruiting I not only posted in Events but would often encourage local people I saw in chat or elsewhere on ff to get on the mailing list. At this point I have 34 people on the list.

Two-banger Events On our last meet-up we went bar-hopping afterwards. We had to walk several blocks to find a good place, which of course can be hard on bigger people, especially after a large meal! It occurred to me it would be nice to plan that in advance and figure out a second place that would be easy to get to from the first place.

Here are some random experiences from doing the same thing on the other coast - for the DC/NoVA/Baltimore area meetings, we have a core group of about 6 who do the organizing - we email each other and figure out who organizes the next meeting. We then announce it here, on fetlife, and some other feederism related places.

We don't have a set email list, but notify people from the usual circle of attendees individually. Even after 3+ years of loosely - regular (couple of times a year) meet-ups, and regular advertising, including contacting everyone from the area we meet online or are aware of, we have maybe had 2 dozen individual attendees, and the usual meeting is between 5 and 8 people, most of whom are from that core group.
It's quite frequent that we get RSVPs from new people who are then no-shows: the old problem of the male feeder who doesn't seem to want to come out of the woodwork. Gender balance tends to be equal, or more women; mostly of us are general FAs/feedists and gainers/feedees, and into eating a lot, pure feeders are rare.

Venue criteria are pretty much the same as yours; it's usually a buffet or a restaurant with a family-all-you-can-eat option; after eating for several hours and hitting everyone's limit, we normally either drive to a dessert place, or waddle over - there is a Cheesecake factory right next to a Maggiano Italian Restaurant.

And yes, it's fun and the people tend to be a bit of a quirky and eclectic crowd. Yes, we get stares. They are entertaining. Initial shyness went away really quickly. Those who come regularly have become friends.

Good luck getting the fatty scene going on the other coast! Hope I can make one of your events to meet everyone one of the next Cali trips.

Good tips! I have done that thing of contacting people directly and getting them to come, but haven't had much luck getting the others to do that.




Yeah, I hope so too! I've been thinking we should have a couple of two dates graven in stone so people can plan trips around them more easily. Like maybe first Sunday in November and first Sunday in May.