Ideas for the students? (43)

Right, what haven't I responded to yet *ponders*

Rich: I think I need to sell my members on the idea of munches at all before I make a monthly event of it (most have never been) but once I've done that it'd be great to manage such a thing :D

Jahc: Indeed, he's got in contact :D His stuff looks great, hopefully we'll work something out.

BlueVelvet: Cool, I remember a previous speaker said that they'd been to the Warwick lot before us and it was good there, I'll get in touch.

We're alright for off-campus venues when we need them, though in reality we can do most things on-campus that we can do off-campus. The guild applies its saftey rules to all society events regardless of whether they're based there or not - I don't want to leave the guild, there are too many advantages to justify it (Not least legitimisation in the eyes of those who'd rather we weren't there :P)

I've emailed our members to find out what sort of demos they want What sorta demos would you be up for doing?

Magenta: What do you mean setting up a BDSM stall? Are you involved with a student group doing such things? Or selling BDSM stuff? Or what? We have 2 days of stall to work with so if you've anything you'd like us to put out it's all good (As long as I can clear it with marketting)

Miss_Evil: 30? We only needed 20 here :D (Good thing too, we've come perilously close to that number some years) Good luck getting it working We're always good to write supporting letters and stuff for startups in other unis

Pinkey: There's a trick to this. Fervently deny your society has anything to do with sex, say you don't encourage sex and indeed do nothing to encourage it so you can't be called a liar. It is my observation that young-adults who've just been taught saftey for a particular skill will develop this drive all on their own such that you cannot possibly be blamed for it.

I strongly suspect adult-adults and old-adults do this too, but haven't taken the time to check.

Edited 4 Aug 08, 12:24 PM by gregoryc

So if any other perverted Oxonians are willing to put their heads above the parapet, maybe something will happen. Maybe. I'd be willing to give it a go if others were.

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a ramble. Anyway, good luck to you in Birmingham . I'll be keeping an interested eye on how things go.

I used to run a student society (nothing kinky - wine soc, but the 2nd largest society at my uni), but they all seem to have some similar problems which need to be solved.

1) Getting people to sign up. This one isn't usually too hard, but if you raise funds through selling memberships at freshers fayre/fair/fare then you want to maximise your appeal. Having said that you don't want to attract the wrong crowd - from my own experience we let cock-soc take the severe alcoholics and we took the refined ones.

So things to think about would be how to broaden your appeal - i.e., the more fun side of fetish, playfulness, experimentation etc ("Now that you've left home isn't it time you got spanked?")

If you are allowed in at the fayre getting a latex vac bed/vac cube would rock as it is noisy and would attract people to you.

2) Getting people to actually turn up. Everyone signs up to more than they can cope with at freshers fayres. Therefore you need to build up a regular crowd. I'd aim to hold my first event pretty soon after the freshers week stuff dies down, but before assignments kick in. Make the first one accessible for beginners but fun. Your first event will have twice as many people turn up as your regular crowd.

The other side of this is getting them to turn up a second time. If you have paid-entry events then try to pre-sell the next one at the end of the previous event. Even use a discount to entice them. This helps with your planning and costs a lot as you have a definite cash flow even if they don't show up. No-shows otherwise can cost you a lot.

3) Keeping it fresh. It is really easy to slip into doing the familiar. Try for the outrageous - a trip to the Berlin Fetish Ball, discount shopping at a fetish fair (worth seeing if you can swing it, BBB, LAM and LFF).

An event which would definitely work if you could pull it off would be an organised food fight - splosh fetish. Most (even non-kinky) students would love a proper food fight and provided you can find a suitable wipe-clean venue (disused swimming pool for example, or hang tarpaulin) then let them at it. 17p custard from Tesco and 8p jelly are so cheap you can make buckets of them.

Reed college in the US has one of the longest running fetish societies. Try getting in touch with them for advice. They have regular visits from the likes of Midori and The Knotty Boys. Their end of year ball is one of the biggest at Reed.

Have fun.