--- In melbournebug@yahoogroups.com, "Christine Ripke" <cripke@h...> wrote:
> Hi Justin

> Can you let me know how many people you actually had coming to meetings etc.
> I can understand the frustration in having small numbers trying to everthing.
I guess
> for me, i would like to know just exactly how many we are talking about. There
is a
> lot of work involved in BUG's and we are all busy in our day to day lives. My
> experience with other Bug's has left me a bit unsure as to whether i wanted to
> be involved.



Hi Christine - Last year MBUG had meeting attendances ranging from 50-odd (at
our
launch meeting) to 10-15 at a regular monthly meeting. But I think that it's
important to
recognise that it's usually the "quality" of the active members, rather than
simply the
"quantity" of them, which plays a big part in the success of a BUG. If MBUG had
100 people
turn up to every meeting but no-one had much to say, then obviously that would
not be as
good as having 15 people turn up, most of whom were keen to get involved in
advocacy
work and talk about cycling issues.

One thing that I've been reminded of often over the past couple of months is
that there are
many people in the Melbourne municipality who are raring to go BUG-wise. If we
had a
core group of (say) 5 or 6 BUG members who were active with campaigning, plus
another
bunch of folks who helped out occasionally, then I'm sure that we could really
start to
move some mountains. But if you're interested in MBUG, please come along to the
first
meeting, meet the other members and have your say there. If you decide
afterwards that
MBUG is not for you, then no worries... but it is equally possible that you'll
think that this
is a group of which you would like to be a part. Personally, I think that we
have the
capacity to learn from our errors (i.e. MBUG's faltering start last year) and
move forward
more successfully & much stronger.

Hope to see you on Sept 8 :)

cheers
Justin