The future of FanForce

I say regulars that frequent their local fan force promote it a lot more. Put it in their sigs, tell their friends etc. From my own observation, a lot of CR's and FF regulars keep themselves to only FF. For the longest time, I myself saw FF as a separate thing from the boards, or a clique thing. I never really understood why the JC and FF were considered to be separate. Especially the communication side of things.

Reading past threads in this very forum, some past JC mods got heavily annoyed that RSA's could vote and have access to things that are JC related, I never understood that either.

Take FF:UK as my fan force, I think people see the lack of activity there and don't think of making the effort of making a post or thread.

In short, I think the JC and FF should come together a lot more than it has been, especially in recent years.

 

Calgary Fan Force is still active. Not so much on the boards here but we have a monthly meeting and a pub night every month. I've also been working the past few years to get our sister Fan Force 300km north of Calgary back on track. I've got a good group up there now who are having regular get togethers. We are actually doing a combined Table at FanExpo this weekend in Edmonton to raise money for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. So the fan force in Alberta Canada is still alive.

We regularly have new people join us as they love the IRL social aspect of the group.

 

A suggestion could be a pinned thread in WNU, Explaining to new and old users alike, exactly what fan force is, I think could generate a bit more interest.

Also, I will elaborate on what I meant earlier: when I say CR's keep themselves mostly in FF, I meant you don't usually see a lot of people with blue usernames posting on the JC side of things, you see a lot of VIP's with red or full colours, but hardly any chapter reps. I think encouraging CR's to post more in, say, social threads could also stir interest.

Just a thought to consider

 

The biggest difference we find with when getting the word about the Fan Forces out there is we push that its a social group. Its a way for people who like to talk and chat Star Wars and get together with like minded people. Sure people can post on social media but you never really get to know the group. Having a meeting IRL or there social events is what we find brings people out. Also since the only requirements are a love of Star Wars and be of legal age this opens the group up to more people. Sure there are the cosplay groups out there, but its always about costumes. And not everybody wants to costume or be associated with those groups. I've never heard of any of those groups just hanging out doings something other than making costumes. There seems to be always a project. Where the fan force more of a social club to meet new people who just have the a love of something you like as well.
We have been using the social aspect of the groups for ever and we are still gaining members.
One of the biggest challenges is social media. People like to use what is easiest and to sign up on a forum is super old school and most people will never find there way here.

 

What is FanForce exactly?

 

^this^ right here is what I mean, many new users don't know what it even is, and it took me a few years to figure it out:

the fan force rules are laid out as if users are already supposed to know what it is:
Simply put:
there is one line that semi-explains it:

Bold right there is mine. And this is the third rule.
The other rules explain what Chapters can and can't do, and mention RSA's and GSA's but doesn't elaborate on who they are or what they do, and the differences between them.
I would be interested to know if the average regular JCer knew what an RSA, GSA and CR stood for, and the differences between what they do. The FF rules do not make that clear.

@Jedi Bluth, Hello and welcome to the discussion: Fan Force is simply for fans of a certain region to get to know each other and have meet-ups,
including things like Star Wars: Celebration events.

 

ok this does make sense. Especially since Fan Force was created before social media was a thing/really took off,

in the year 2022 I don't think many will log on to a SW forum to arrange events when they could probably post on Facebook or send DM's on Instagram.

aside from:

I think promoting it in WNU would be the next best thing, all in my humble opinion of course

I could even possibly add it to my signature or status. "Support your local Fan Force" or something.

 

Also, would like to add the rules of Fan Force are truncated,

not suggesting that this is a reason for little activity, but might be something that is easily fixed.

 

Honestly fanforce hasn’t even been a big thing since I got here in 2014. Me and @Dandelo were actually just talking about this recently as well. I definitely second the idea of a pinned thread in WNU explaining fanforce.

 

Ah this I can agree with. I do think seeing people with "host of (insert game here) is helpful in promoting said games. I think if I only basically did the interview threads and the mole they would have a lot less players. So finding people from those areas who are at least active would be good.

 

I can only really speak for my perspective of the UK FF but we were a mix of ages/maturities and a large portion moved off to University and new interests and others had families and ran out of available time.

The remaining regular ex posters are on the JCC in the main. Thats where the discussions are. We're not going to talk about the Queens funeral on here in a UK bubble, we'll talk about it with a global audience and hear a swathe of ideas and opinions.

I've limited interest in "Meet ups" as such. If someone was coming to Manchester and a few posters decided to go for a pint with them then I'd be up for it but I'm not going to go out of my way to schlep across the country anymore unless there was a good reason to do so that sat on top of the meet up.

Personally, I would say that FF needs to be more condensed and its positioning in the boards revisited.
Should FF community actually be associated with the JCC so that the community side of FF is more noticeable?
Shoud there be an FF presence in the WNU section?

It feels like FF spreads the discussions far too thinly. Should it be condensed into 1 Subforum with a version of community giving an FF:JCC (which in many respects should be redundant due to the JCC but knowing the JCC's reputation could actually be a sensible idea) then further to country/region as appropriate. e.g. Europe as a subforum and in there could be a thread called UK, Germany, France etc... where there is group wide local discussion and then if someone wants to arrange a European meet they could create a new thread for "Lille Feb '23" but as it's in European forum its then open for everyone to see and Belgians living near Lille may then want to join the discussion and attend. It could broaden the scope and bring the membership closer together.

Basically, if you want FF to thrive, you need to make it really easy for people to make potential meets really obvious and be open to cross boarder visitors. You also need to make it so that discussions aren't diluted across multiple countries/forums.

 

How do we know who's in charge of our "areas" and if it is still active.

 

Unfortunately my local FF completely imploded years ago due to infighting. By the time I was "elected"(the only one willing to take on the job) as FF President or whatever it was called, it was basically already dead. Also several members moved away so the St. Louis FF chapter is non-existent which is sad because I met some great people. Heck we even got to work one of Aaron Allston's book signings when Betrayal came out.

 

As far as I know, my regional FF is inactive on the boards. I know I posted in their main thread years ago with no response. At that time, they did an online in a Facebook group, but I strongly dislike having to do things on Facebook, especially groups. I haven't looked in years to see if they're still active or not. A regional FF wasn't the reason I got on the JC boards in general.

 

@Skiara Yeah, I'm not on about adding JCC and FFC together, that would be lunacy but a closer association could be an idea. The "toxicity" of the JCC may be enough to avoid this idea altogether though
You definitely need a presence in WNU though. FF may feel like a closed book to some on first viewing but the biggest killer is that they're dead mainly because the content that is discussed is often picked up elsewhere on the boards. Need to identify a why to stimulate activity in the FF forums and again that leads me to broadening the range of potential contributors

 

that doesn't seem very, nice at all. Sorry that has happened.

maybe this could be something @Skiara could put on the list? greater emphasis on socialization