New Beta ambassador

[Cal Animage Beta]

Well, that's how it's turned out. There has been a slight change of hands.
I'm ScarletMoon of Beta, and I'll apparently be serving as ambassador to Alpha this year.

Hm, I'm not entirely sure what to do with this position yet, but I'll try to do my duty as best as possible.

That being said, I suppose I'll inform you of our current status here in SD.
As of now, we're having a little bit of trouble kicking off. Getting and keeping members seems to be somewhat of an issue, not to mention recruiting. We're rather unknown this year it seems. A large number of SD students don't know that an anime club even exists on campus, so we're hoping to work that out. Aside from recruitment using fliers posted on walls (which may or may not be effective), we're planning on designing shirts and having a showing at our on-campus theater. I'm going to hope that helps mend the situation.
As far as keeping members is concerned. Up until now, we've pretty much only had showings. Although, we go out after one of them to hang out. That being said, to keep members, some of us believe that more social events are in order. We're working out doing game nights at the moment. We theorize the problem with having showings is that people could easily just watch the anime in the comfort of their room... although on a much smaller screen. On the other hand, the issue with someone I know is that they just continually forget about the club (meetings at least).

Any suggestions on how to speed up things in Beta would be appreciated.

Well anyway... よろしくお願いします

[Derringer]

A year or two ago there was this idea by a few people from the remaining Cal Animages to build a stronger more interactive Cal Animage community to help each other out. The primary purpose was to define the position of the anime club in this modern day where most people watch anime by themselves in their room as opposed to with other people. So there were several of us that got in contact with other Animage chapters to try to work this out. Unfortunately most if not all of the Animage clubs had their forums/websites go down at least once or twice for extended periods of time and whatever discussions were present were lost.

Do you guys have an email listserv? We send out reminders every week to people who signed up for our main showings and game nights. I dunno the particulars of the SD campus, but was there a club fair of sorts for students to go around looking for clubs? Are student organizations allowed to table and past fliers out to students as they walk through a busy plaza?

[Maceart]

Welcome, Cal Animage Beta. It's always nice to have the Cal Animage's working together.

As for gaining publicity for the club, flyer-ing is one of the only methods to do it. Check with the residential hall directors at the dorms to see if you can post a flyer on their bulletin boards. Make sure you have a website up and running, and set up a schedule of showings. E-mail Bandai/Funimation/Viz/Tokyopop/etc for anime promotion goodies to hand out during meetings as prizes.

Holding a game night is a great idea, have a couple board games (Settlers of Catan/Anime apples to apples/Chess), and if you can afford it, a Wii with Super Smash Brothers Brawl. If someone has an Xbox360/PS3 with the newer 2D fighting games, holding a tournament is also another idea.

Tabling is a great help too, but don't be too pushy about it.

Good luck.

[Arifureta]

Oh hey, I had no idea there were other chapters. Good to see you around.

We theorize the problem with having showings is that people could easily just watch the anime in the comfort of their room... although on a much smaller screen.

The way I see it, showings are less about actually getting to watch anime and more about having a set time in the week where you know you won't be worrying about school. The shows are more of a bonus.

Then again, that's just me.

[kazuki]

Having an mailing list and e-mail remainder of events and showings to members is a really good way to go in my opinion. Fliers help alot too
i think showing is really important in that it's not all about watching anime on a big screen, but interact with other anime fans. therefore, it's for people who don't really find people with common interests in class to get to know more people

Prizes is a really good way to attract members in my opinion. we give out prizes every few week, and have a HUGE prize in the end (usually a built Gundam or DVD set). that's why contacting Funimation or Bandai is really good ideas because they usually have those "college club" programs in which they'll send you promotional goods

[Sword of Swords]

Another thing a that we do is Manga Social, which is basically a book club for manga.

[Derringer]

Oh hey, I had no idea there were other chapters. Good to see you around.

It was mentioned in the first Konshuu...also all over our website

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~animage/ko ... e%2001.pdf

[Arifureta]

Ah, I wasn't here for the first showing. Never got that Konshuu. ><

Aaand... Now is probably not a good time to say that I never really explore the site.

But hey, now I know. \o/

[rephira]

Newsletters =D

[takagi]

Newsletters =D

Quit padding your part.

The suggestions already up here are very good. A newsletter like our Konshuu (see the main site) is nice if you can afford it and are willing to put in the effort.