AHL, Arena football, college basketball, the MISL or whats left of it. It would be great to see an AHL game with my son on a Friday or Saturday night.

The Capital Centre has come and gone as well as other numerous arenas and yet Baltimore continues to fall behind with excuse after excuse just like the westside development project.

Build it and they will come! Lets build the outdoor soccer stadium and get the Bay Hawks back and get DC United.

So much to say.

As many people know, I was on vacation for three weeks during September and October. I had arranged quite a few chats while I was away, and expected to arrange more, but my internet connectivity in Europe turned out to be pretty flaky and I was not able to be an effective community manager during that time. I apologize for not doing a good job while I was away. Now that I’m back and mostly dug out of the backlog that accumulated while romping through Italy and England, I have time to commit to the chats again.

Regardless of this, there’s no question that the #eventprofs chats have changed in numerous ways since they started nearly three years ago. And, as others have mentioned above, that’s normal and OK. I have moderated several private online communities for many years, and, in all of them, I’ve seen a constant flow of people arriving and leaving for all kinds of reasons, as well as rises and falls in activity level that depend on personalities present, seasonal changes, and the appearance of new topics for discussion.

Looking at the big picture, I’m not concerned about the #eventprofs chats at the moment, though I’m not complacent either. As long as there is enough energy and interest for moderating and holding the chats, I am happy to help organize them. If this disappears, we’ll stop—I have no interest in trying to keep them going if the community isn’t there.

As Greg points out, some of the original offers to moderate the chats have not been followed up on. I have contacted these people privately, and they’re no longer on my list of potential moderators, whom I periodically contact to request moderation assistance. But, so far, I continue to receive new offers to moderate which have allowed us to fill most twice-weekly chat slots except recently, while I was away.

Incidentally, if you are interested in moderating an #eventprofs chat, contact me! It’s an excellent way to get exposure and connection to the #eventprofs community, and I’m happy to help you get started.

Broadcast-style, unrelated tweets during the chat are, indeed, annoying! I can definitely see the attraction of using a separate hashtag just for the chat. However, on balance, I’m against this because I think the benefit of new people discovering the chats while monitoring the #eventprofs stream outweighs the nuisance of mentally filtering out non-chat tweets.

Choosing relevant topics for the chats is always a tough issue. Looking back, it’s hard to predict what will be of interest. I created a place to suggest and vote on chat topics but think I need to promote requests for chat topics more vigorously. In general, I’m content to let the community and moderators offer topics and decide what takes place.

Finally, the number and timing of chats is an open question. Historically, we’ve had two fixed time slots each week, partially so that European #eventprofs could join the predominantly US chat audience. Now that Sanne has started a European chat (#EUventprofs), perhaps there’s less of a need for a (US) daytime chat. Personally, I think we can sustain two chats a week most of the time, and I don’t see it as a failure when some slots don’t get filled. I think it will become clear if we get to a stage where less frequent chats are appropriate. As far as timing goes, I think it would be good to discuss this on a chat, perhaps moderated by Greg and me, later this year. During this chat we can also reevaluate our chats in general and work on making any resulting adjustments.

Thank you everyone who has contributed to this discussion. Your willingness to share your thoughts indicates that there’s still some life in this old dog yet!

It’s amazing the mutual feelings all Front Desk Agents have.

I like that you posted this. I was one of those people that worked with Adrian to help bring the chats back and I was very interested in them, but like some of the other commenters here, my interests changed as did the conversations being had during the chat. While I was focusing on a career in events, I am now in the digital PR sphere and while I still follow the #eventprofs tag for news, I don’t participate in chats.

I would say a great way to start getting interest back would be to cut the chats down to once a month. Help get some interest going with more focused topics and less worry about who can moderate the next chat. Hopefully, this will take some pressure off the community and people will start attending again!

Thanks for the overview!
Besides the content and subject issues mentioned above, I think there’s a more profound problem: the use or brand of the eventprofs hashtag. It is not really a chat hashtag anymore, but a eventprofs commmunity brand. When you’re in the events business #eventprofs is where you want to be (seen).

So a simple way to declutter might possibly be assigning a new dedicated chat hashtag?

I am an eventsprofs chat virgin Mainly because I hadnt picked up on the chats in twitter. I will happily pop my cherry in October. I am constantly struggling with the American time difference and tend to be mid afternoon when I am normally at a client. I will pay much more attention and would even facilitate. Maybe how do UK/Europe meetings differ from US meetings? As a topic.