Guitar Clubs on justinguitar.com

[sunjamr]

Years ago I signed up for Justin Sandercoe’s guitar forum, just to see how it worked. So I get email newsletters occasionally, and this one came in today. In it, he discusses the new “guitar clubs” he has started in his forum, and it looks like he has maybe 5 or so happening. I think they function kind of like Manfred’s Zoom meetings, or maybe like the AM Jammers started by Craig. Each “club” seems to have a leader – either a volunteer, or one of Justin’s staff (I think he has a full-time staff now) – to act as moderator, advisor, etc. I see a Beginners Club, Vintage Club, Blues Club, and a Motivation and Inspiration Club. I wonder if this is something our forum should consider. For example, almost every day we get posts from new members asking where to start, how to record themselves playing, etc. We could respond by inviting them to join the Beginners Club. We could have things like a Fingerpicking Club, an Acoustic Club, a Bluegrass Club, whatever.

Sunjamr Steve

[Mark H]

“I’d never join a club that would have me as a member” — Groucho Marx

So I’m not really a club person. But I think you should go ahead and contact Brian about it and see what he thinks. I think (but don’t really know) it would require a lot of dev work to make it happen, unless it were confined to using the existing discussion forum or the Courses feature and creating some new categories. Maybe that’s all we would need?

Whizz-bang new features take time and resources to build unless the existing software can be used, or at worst tweaked just slightly. Then there’s a business case that would have to be made to justify it. I believe one could make that case, customer satisfaction & retention, site longevity, competitiveness in the market, versus costs like time and money. And so on.

If it takes off I will get behind it and help any way I can, as well as contributing to discussions.

[sunjamr]

Actually, you’re in a club already, Mark. The AM Forum club. And within the AM Forum, two other clubs have already spontaneously arisen with no input from Brian, and no changes to the web page format. It could be as simple as adding a few more Forum Topics, Or as complicated as having a volunteer act as moderator for related forum posts and maybe organize a time for Zoom meetings, which is what Manfred has been doing.

Sunjamr Steve

[Mark H]

Hmmm… I see what you’re saying. Personally I don’t regard online discussion forums as “clubs”, at least in the pre-internet definition of the word. I take your point though and will refrain from arguing semantics.

[Mark H]

BTW, is GANZ still going in Auckland? I was a founding member, in fact it was my idea, Jeff at Harborn & Arthur helped get it going. Google Maps tells me Harborn & Arthur are no longer on Ponsonby Rd

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