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Deer Park, WI

Last Friday evening, a group of ~30 growers, many of whom serve in club/event leadership roles, gathered for an open sharing of best practices framed in the interest of growing the hobby.

I'd like to thank all who participated, as well as the GPC Execs who granted me permission to moderate this discussion. Based on its success, I hope this topic becomes a staple in future Big Show agendas.

Gordon Tanner, of the Utah group, who wasn't in attendance, sent me a document that captures the vast majority of what was discussed. If you'd like this document, please contact myself or Gordon.

Social media channels were a recurring theme. Maintaining fresh activity on club/event websites, facebook pages, and now Twitter feeds are an essential way to build interest. Using the power of "crowd sourcing" as friends "like" "repost" and "retweet" news items of interests to their networks of friends gets our word out far and wide. Each club/event should have a dedicated social media lead who keeps content flowing.

As an extension of this, traditional media outlets, like local newspapers and tv news, continue to be a valuable resource. Getting local media to be included in your efforts pays dividends. They love covering the novelty of our hobby. Press releases, scripted by media-savvy club/event members, are likely to have greater effect a week prior to an event vs farther out from the event.

Tim Parks shared the value of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with the local county fair. While often challenging to penetrate, identifying how your club/event/group can breath life and vitality into local fairs opens great doors to accessing a public hungry to become involved.

3/23/2017 10:17:00 AM

Deer Park, WI

Attention was also brought to the value of providing prizes for new & young growers. Many new to the hobby are producing pumpkins in the 100-300lb range. Establishing and publicizing prize structures so that these growers can earn/win a noteworthy prize check incentivizes this cohort of growers to bring their fruit and therefore interact with the upper echelon. This is how newer growers get hooked and educated.

A wise and prophetic newly minted GPC exec alumnus appropriately emphasized the importance collective contribution. In a great many cases, the "80/20" rule applies, where 80% of the workload is shouldered by 20% of the volunteers. It was noted that in some cases, its more along the lines of "95/5". Many hands makes for lighter work. If you appreciate your local club and weighoff, show that appreciation by contributing in some capacity.

3/23/2017 10:18:17 AM

Muddy Waters

Sorry I missed it Joe my feet were killing me Friday night so I crashed early.I would have loved to have heard you speak

3/23/2017 10:25:31 AM

Muddy Waters

It was a pleasure to meet you & speak with you.I did hear you speak on Saturday.I enjoyed it looking forward to further discussions & brainstorming promoting this Sport

3/23/2017 10:31:36 AM

Hamilton - New Zealand

Hi Joe, as well as building interest and promoting locally social media updates are really great for people that can't make it to events but would still like to be part of it some little way.

Seeing updates of a weigh-off is it is happening is another way to spread excitement and word of mouth amongst the communities, and I know we appreciate it seeing it, especially in our off-season down under.

Promoting and getting more people interested is always a discussion we have for our event.

I'd like a copy of the document, I've sent you an email.

3/23/2017 11:43:02 AM

Utah

thanks for the props - glad we could help.
I didn't come up with all of those ideas- we have a great group of Utah growers many of whom have great ideas and are tech savvy.

3/27/2017 6:22:26 PM