Leafmite, I really like your idea of offering better ideas. Not sure if you've already seen this thread...
Questions For Youngish Orchid Growers.
What I've noticed about societies is that they are really unequally open to ideas. The OSSC didn't think it was a good idea for them to have a FB page. I created one anyways. They also didn't think it was a good idea for members to have the option to sell their plants at meetings. The Fern Society, on the other hand, thought it was a great idea.
Part of the OSSC's concern is that members selling their own plants would compete money away from the raffle table. This gets into the issue of what's good for the members versus what's good for the society. It also gets into the issue of how to determine what's actually good for the members. Is it informative and meaningful if members decide to spend more money buying plants from each other than buying raffle tickets?
Today I ran across this quote from the founder of Amazon...
Quote:
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The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other….In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts. - Jeff Bezos
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Society members are the ultimate judges of the quality of a society's services. If you're unhappy with the quality, then you can certainly use your words to inform the society. This is referred to as "voice". If voicing your concerns/displeasures/dissatisfactions doesn't improve things, then you always have the option to quit the society. This is known as "exit".
Exit is a strong but vague signal. Voice is a weak but specific signal. Many members leaving is far more concerning than many members complaining. But most of the time when members leave they really don't voice their reasons for doing so. So it's often not quite clear why members leave.
Lots of people no longer participate here on the OB. Why don't they? It's really hard to say.
Exit doesn't have to be vague though. If you stop buying raffle tickets and start buying plants from other members, then you're exiting specifically from the raffle table. You didn't quit the entire society, you just quit one part of it. You didn't boycott the entire society, you just boycotted one part of it. This provides the society with substantial and specific feedback.
Imagine an orchid show/sale with a $10 admission fee. When you purchase your ticket you have the option to decide how you divide the $10 dollars between the show, the sale and the talks (presentations, lectures). If you are only there to buy plants, then you could earmark all $10 dollars to the vendors. If you are equally there to see the show and listen to the talks then you could earmark $5 dollars to each one. This would allow the organizers to see a breakdown of your reasons for attending the event. The organizers would see a breakdown of everybody's reasons for attending the event. If people earmark 1% of their fees to the talks, 4% to the show, and 95% to the sales, then the organizers should structure next year's show accordingly.
The same logic applies to society meetings. Maybe people will allocate 95% of their fees to the food table? Heh. Personally, I like food. But I'm hardly going to sit in traffic for some food. I'm more inclined to sit in traffic to see some awesome orchids. I'm even more inclined to sit in traffic to buy some awesome orchids. How inclined am I to sit in traffic to listen to a talk about orchids? It really depends on the topic and the presenter.
So from my perspective, it's all about the feedback. Voting provides feedback but it's not very substantial. Quitting a society, on the other hand, certainly is substantial feedback, but it's not very specific. My theory is that specific and substantial feedback is entirely necessary and incredibly beneficial.
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