Hobbies in the SCA or Questions that Need Answers

Lately my involvement in the SCA seems to be purely theoretical and perhaps even political, if only in the sense that I have been reading some about the politics and a lot of conversations people have been having trying to decide how to help out.

There are two comments I seem to hear a lot of. One comment is "How do we get more people involved." There is not a single community in the SCA that I have not heard this from. Everything from gathering more members on a whole to just finding more singers or more musicians or more fighters or more fencers or, and this is the one that can sometimes sting, more volunteers.

Yes. The SCA is a group of volunteers. It is a fantastic hobby. There are so many things out there to enjoy. But without the volunteers to do the more difficult tasks, the SCA starts to fall apart. But more and more now there are people who say 'uh uh, not me, I'm here to have fun!' So, how do you get more people involved?

The second comment I seem to notice a lot is "We need to get people who don't like us to like us." I hear this from many communities. There is a lot of friction between different groups of people in the SCA, but instead of asking why there is friction and how can we help, people feel if they are more head strong that they can push through the friction.

Because of this, I made a very quick, short, simple survey. It should take only five minutes, less if you don't want to make really long answers. The more detailed you get, though, the more helpful it is for me in the long run. I will keep the survey up, but once I have enough responses, I'm going to start picking it apart and making up some graphs and see what I may be able to assess from the answers.

Please consider filling out this survey as I think that it will really be a benefit in the years to come to really look through this information and be able to answer the question most on my mind, and I am sure others. "What are we lacking in that we can perhaps change or make stronger so that more people will want to become involved?"

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BVCLWTD