I spent all of yesterday on the train, returning from a small, rural community in northeast Montana. I facilitated a meeting there on river issues, and, unfortunately, participation for that meeting was quite low.
We anticipated low participation, and yet various political constraints dictated that we go ahead an conduct the meeting even though we knew attendance was likely to be higher a month later (the date originally suggested). We couldn't provide travel funds, but we did provide a dinner during one of the presentations.
As we discussed what these attendance challenges might be, we came up with a few ideas:
- Late summer vacations prior to school starting
- Grain harvest operations keeping key agricultural stakeholders at home
- Lack of adequate lead time to allow for word-of-mouth advertising
- Length of meeting during the week (4pm-9pm on a Tuesday. A Saturday meeting was discussed, but the only thing more difficult than generating participation in Montana in the summer is generating participation on a Saturday!)
Some of these issues are about timing, geography, and cultural norms. What are some of the challenges you all have when trying to generate participation?
