Posted by Joe P in Questions for the Candidates - Membership Trends
This is another set of questions for anyone who wants to answer.

Something that has not been talked about publicly very much lately is club membership trends. Which, I think is disappointing because… something very interesting has been going on for the past 10 months or so.

https://www.star-fleet.com/stats/membership/

The chart that I’ve linked to is membership data since we moved to Exodus. It is not a “live” chart; the query to measure the total active membership is very slow and thus I only run it periodically. As of right now, the chart is current up to July 5 (yesterday).

What I find incredibly shocking about this chart, is that for the first time in the entire time I have been in the club there is a consistent upward trend since the end of October. Membership from 2012 to 2016 was largely flat at around 120 members; in 2017 and 2018 it dipped a little bit but was mostly flat around 100 members. Last year, we dipped to 80 members, which is the lowest number I’ve ever personally witnessed. Since that minimum though, the club has grown almost every single month, and yesterday we set a record high for the past two years.

I know the easy joke to make is that it’s really easy for the club to do well during a pandemic that shuts down the entire global economy. And clearly you can see a big spike in April that is likely due to COVID. But… we were already trending upward anyway. Which, I think is something people haven’t really noticed or thought about much, let alone talked about. So, I want to see what you all think about it.

1) Why, excluding COVID (which will get its own questions in a separate post), do you think membership has been trending upward for most of the past year? Do you think this trend is significant? How do you determine what significance is?

I think it’s a perfect storm of things lining up just right. 2019 marked the 25th Anniversary of the launch of Star Trek Voyager and the release of Season Two of Star Trek: Discovery. Some of the largest Cons of 2019 celebrated Voyager’s anniversary and included watch parties, guests from the show, and as well as other events. Combined with the renewed interest in the works of Roddenberry since Discovery’s launch in 2017 and the Kelvin reboot, including a heavy full-court press of media coverage leading up to the launch of Star Trek: Picard in January 2020 (#LovedIt!), the forge is primed to bring in tons of new folks as well as those returning who are excited at the future of Trek. Honestly, I’d say this is probably one of the best times to be a Trekkie and it’s no surprise at the upward trend!

2) What, if anything, does this upward trend suggest to you? Is there anything we ought to be doing differently right now? Is there any part of your plans that you would change with this new information? Or should we not change anything?

That we need to look at a new approach for drawing in new members. I think a Disco timeline ship might finally be in order, but that is more a GM question as producing an Alt-Sim environment our GM’s aren’t comfortable with would be fool-hearty. Again, Discord watch parties and discussion panels both in-club and at any one of the online-Cons to discuss the future of Trek and the current series would get our name out there, creating buzz around the club as well as RP in Trek.

There will likely be follow up questions, since this is one of those really complicated, totally open-ended topics.

Joe

Hope this answers your questions and if not, please post your follow-ups so we can address those too!

Thanks,
Davis/Sinclair 2020
Improve, Reform, & Engage