New Faces at Tonight's Event...

Based on feedback I'm getting, there are going to be many new faces at tonight's event. We only started up a little less than three months ago, and our events have been wonderful, but I always worry that we might someday fall into the usual affinity-group trap:

Everybody arrives, the long-time members gather in a tight little huddle, and the new guys BOUNCE off of everybody else's backs as the long-timers cluster together exchanging howdies. This is never good for any group that wants to stay vibrant and growing. This hasn't happened yet, because everybody has been honoring Rule #1 for our events so far.

So, I'm belaboring the point, once again, for the sake of the newest guys:

Please mix and mingle, often, and take some time to talk to somebody who looks shy.  You looked just like that at YOUR first FMSD event, and now that you've seen how honestly nice the rest of the guys are, you've become all bold and sassy.  Please extend the hand of brotherhood to everybody there, even if it doesn't seem to have any short-term payoff for you. 

Do it as an investment in our community's future.

If you want to see really, REALLY big events (imagine six hundred thrilled and delighted men at big parties within the next year), then we have to go about it the right way. We can't just repeat the crappy "Sink or Swim" attitude that serves to isolate us from each other, as you find at most "HAWT PARTEEZ" out there (particularly in other big cities in California).  Aren't you sick of having to bring a protective coating of friends to the usual kind of events, just so that you won't have a terrible time?

The way around it is for all of us, together, to drop the defenses, be like a bunch of uninhibited three-year-olds (before we learned to become cynical) and be good to each other. If we all do it, then magic happens, as it has at each of our events.  Men have learned to trust our events, and I want that trust to grow.

Thank you!   I'll see you tonight.  I'll be wearing my newest uniform.