[Artemisia] What made you stay?

[George A.Trosper]

I don't remember exactly what made me come to my second event--it was 
back in A.S. XIII, after all!--but I assume it was the interesting 
people and the planned activities. For instance, I had studied heraldry 
in books from the SLC Library not only before the soon-to-be Incipient 
Shire was founded but since before the SCA was founded. I enjoyed 
singing the old ballads even when there was no one else to listen to 
them. I already knew some people involved from role-play gaming and/or 
SF fandom, and liked the others I met well enough, too.

I'm not sure how helpful the above is for your purposes, Lord Chatelaine.

What may be more useful--not for immediate recruitment but for 
retention--is what made me and others stay long-term. As Baroness Leah 
de Spencer formulated it to me (IIRC) a long while ago, people who like 
attending the ongoing costume party may stick around for up to a year. 
If and only if they get involved w/ actually doing something, they keep on.

Does that accord w/ the experience of others reading this?

P.S. On 2/8/2012 2:30 PM, Ian shinn wrote in answer to this question:
> girls in bunny-fur chainmail bikinis

May I ask where in the Kingdom you encountered them, good my lord? I've 
never seen any except in a skit at an all-kingdom event a decade or two 
ago, in which a hunter urged us, the audience, to be "vewy, vewy quiet" 
as he was hunting rabbit.