Building regional groups

[Martin Bohnet]

Dear all,

since the forum software allows for unlimited user groups, I'd like to provide regional groups for people to join. This does allow the Forum team to send notifications about posts concerning those regions, e.g. announcing the EU-Exchange precisely to EU-based members - that group already exists.

Actually, i need some ideas for the other regional groups - USA alone or with Canada or more? Additional Europe including non EU countries? how big are we in Asia, Africa, Australia? Please post your ideas

[David Pilling]

See Google analytics - ISTR sharing this with you. I was surprised that China is now in 5th place. This is the last week for the wiki. users/percent.

1.   
United States
1,696   39.34%
2.   
United Kingdom
385   8.93%
3.   
Australia
373   8.65%
4.   
Canada
160   3.71%
5.   
China
154   3.57%
6.   
South Africa
149   3.46%
7.   
Japan
125   2.90%
8.   
New Zealand
122   2.83%
9.   
Germany
88   2.04%
10.   
France
85   1.97%

[Steve Willson]

Hi Martin - I like the idea of regional groups as I'm sure there are PBS members living in my area that I have no knowledge of.  I live in coastal Washington State, mid-way between Seattle and Vancouver, Canada.  I'd be interested in a regional group for the PNW, as I struggle to grow many of the South African species that those in Arizona, California and southern Oregon can.  Of course, the PNW would include British Columbia and Alaska too, and I suppose those with a similar climate elsewhere - Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Tasmania, New Zealand... - could join in too.  So this makes me think that regional groups could either be on a a geographical or Hardiness Zone basis.  But this is certainly something to consider further.

[Diane Whitehead]

We could have a new section, placed between Geophyte Discussions and Off-topic Area.

Regional Bulb Growing

North America:
Pacific Northwest Coastal
Pacific Northwest Mountain
California
Southwest

Europe:

etc

[Uli]

Hello Martin,

With reference to the recent topics concerning new restrictions on seed import into Australia, an Australian group might be vital.

Uli 

[Rick R.]

Some questions regarding regional groups that may cause consternation:

1) Does this mean there can be multiple threads on the same topic, but in different regional groups?

2) Does this mean members could choose to follow only their own group's conversations, and not see any other groups' threads?

[Martin Bohnet]

The regional groups are only relevant, when we use the "Announce Topic" function which sends out Emails to Users even if they hadn't subscribed - for Exchanges or local events - we don't plan on having closed subforums for different regions - that would be possible, but I don't think there will be regional secrets to keep from other regions. The groups that do change access and have hidden areas are Wiki-Team and Board Member- and both can't be chosen by oneself.

[Rick R.]

Thanks, Martin.  That was exactly my worry: that members would be excluded from conversations because they weren't part of a certain group.  I am very glad that this is not the case.

[MarcR]

I like Diane's idea of having US regional groups small enough that announcements of shows, sales, and chapter activities remains relevant.

[janemcgary]

As the Membership Coordinator for PBS, I've always encouraged the idea of members in a region to interact in person when possible, and this has happened several times. Early in PBS's history we had a breakout session at a NARGS annual meeting, and Nhu Nguyen organized a meeting in Berkeley. More recently a number of us enjoyed an excursion to see plants on California's central coast. I can easily pull out subsections of the membership database by state, country, or postal code, if anyone's interested in setting up an event. When someone in my local area joins PBS, I invite them to attend our NARGS chapter's regular (in non-pandemic times) meetings, since there's a lot of overlap with PBS there already.