Can I attend a trial event or meeting before committing to membership?

[Hev]

This question reflects an individual's desire to explore the community and its offerings before making a commitment to become a member. By asking if they can attend a trial event or meeting, individuals seek the opportunity to experience firsthand the community's atmosphere, activities, and interactions with current members. Attending a trial event allows individuals to assess whether the community aligns with their interests, values, and expectations. It also provides an opportunity to ask questions, meet potential peers and mentors, and gauge the level of engagement within the community. Ultimately, attending a trial event enables individuals to make an informed decision about whether to pursue membership based on their firsthand experience and observations.

[Carl Dickson]

Some of our in person gatherings will be announced publicly and some will be just for members of the community. I would love for you to be able to attend one of our gatherings, I just can't tell you when the next one will be.  Right now we're obsessing over launching the website. We've already decided to have one in person event for our official launch, and probably one a month after that. We'll also have virtual events. As more people join we'll probably get to where we have either a live or virtual event every couple of weeks. As we continue to grow that will probably become weekly with different kind of events based on member interests. That will take us past the point where one person can attend them all, and they'll be in different locations and focused on different things. Then it becomes organic. But it how quickly it happens depends on people's interests, energy, and enthusiasm.

As far as trials go, we're pretty stingy with them. But it's not about the money. The subscription keeps the trolls away and gives our community the separation a community needs to be a community. Plus, the commitment is so small. $8 for a month. And it's just enough to give members of our community the feeling of being invested in its success. Take that away and we'll get people with not commitment to the ideals we talk about drifting in and out every time the wind blows differently. We may from time to time, and especially at our launch, give out something like coupons for a free month. But I don't see that being an ongoing or routine thing.

What I'd rather focus on is publishing enough information about what's behind the paywall so that you can make an informed decision about whether you want to join and be a part of our community. For example, we haven't officially launched yet and I see about we have about 200 posts and content items. After our launch I plan to add automagically updated statistics to our landing page so that guests can see the depth and breadth of what we're up to.