Hi Dan. This is on the forefront of the board's mind and everything you stated falls (currently) under the position of Social Media Director, which remains unfulfilled and is (for now) one of the things I'm a placeholder for. Because of time constraints (come to the board meeting on 4/6 and you'll see how busy I've been of late), I've only pushed out notices and Charles' MOGH education videos (with Bob Miksztal's assistance).

I personally have a vision to create a Marketing Director position that oversees everything including Social Media, Publicity, Advertising, the Magazine, and anything else that's involved with "getting the word out". I think AI can assist us in this pursuit by helping us decide what content would be desirable, which platforms to push it up to, monitoring responses as well as engagement time, and membership signup and retention rates. Most of this can be done for free and therefore has unlimited return on the investment. If, and as, the club grows, we could carve out funds for targeted advertising and outreach into communities and platforms that we can't reach through free channels.

This is a one-off idea I thought about. I'd want to get input from our poker-playing members before implementing it, but what if we opened up our club tournament to "outsiders" with the requirement that they have to join the club for a minimum of 1 year (can do it at tournament registration) and pay the tournament entry fees. It would create a bigger field for the tournament and get more people exposed to the club (every new member is contacted by the Mentor Director who will find out if they already collect gaming items and help lead them into the pit of degeneracy that we all enjoy. If this is successful, we could resurrect the Blackjack Tournament using similar promotional methods (my wife currently holds the title of "1st Place winner for all time forever infinity I win" since she won the last one we held). Branching out from that, how about a slot tournament at the Four Queens with the winner(s) getting silver strikes as prizes in addition to cash. I guarantee that the Silver Strikers Club would join us for that and PS their tournament is the weekend following our convention, so it would be easy(ish) to get many of them to show up a week early if we were also having one. Trust me, I've spoken to many of them and they WANT the convention to be adjacent to their June tournament.

Traditional outreach can still have some effect, but not with the same volume and effect that modern outreach using social media platforms and AI-generated content and planning can/will. You can expect me to be more proactive in my 2nd year regarding this, and maybe earlier if I can get through a few more major projects. My current one is setting up an online auction that will run concurrently with the live auction we hold at the convention. Hundreds or even thousands of new bidders will be going up against the live bids in the room, generating more activity and more dollars for the club. And guess what I'm putting in the auction title, description, and on EVERY ITEM... Advertisement of our club and what we're all about. I can't wait to see if Mike tells me we got 10+ new members who joined simply to be part of the gang because "I never knew you guys existed!".

Anyway, I like your train of thought and there's a LOT we can do to make outreach more successful than it's been in recent years. No offense to all us old geezers, but social media is largely a young person's game and it will be paramount to find AND LISTEN TO suitable people to take on this challenge (although geezers are welcome to apply and help out).

-- barry