Interested In Becoming A Regional Host?

Are you interested in becoming a regional Host? Here's your chance to step up and lead your regional forum for the upcoming season.
Listed below you will see our guidelines/duties for our regional hosts.
In addition to these duties, I am looking for a solid 3 month commitment. If you don't think you can honestly commit for 3 months, please don't submit for a position. At the end of the term, if the administration and host are still in agreement, then the term just continues to the next, and so on.
I am also going to consider partnerships. Some regions and hosts might just work better with more than one host. Depending on the interest, we will see how this plays out.
We need regional hosts who are going to be committed and take an active daily interest in the forums. Hosts need to check in daily and contribute to posts and conversations, and help lead day to day activities.
So, if you are interested please read through Regional Host's Duties.
Then email or pm me a brief Regional Host description of yourself and region, along with your regions first and last frost dates, planting times, etc. that best fit your region. This will be used as the introduction for your region.

I highly encourage anyone who wants to step up a little bit and be a leader of their regional forum to submit an introduction. This can be an excellent opportunity for you and your region to have a great, productive, fun, and informative year. This is also your opportunity to get in on the ground floor and help me and the regional hosts come up with new and exciting ideas for the year to come!


Regional Host's Duties
timwardell on Fri Mar 26, 2010 4:38 pm

The more members that post, the more fun and informative it is for everyone. These are suggestions that are known to help increase participation. They are not requirements. Try them out-see how they work for you. If you try something new, and it's effective, let everyone know so they can try it to.

Regional Host Duties:
1. make sure that newcomers in your region are greeted.

2. keep conversations/posts/activity going within your region by posting relevant information.

3. consider posting first and last frost dates, planting times, etc. to help newbies

4. watch for information or pictures in your regional posts that may be of interest to everyone and should be included in the general forum.

5. start a first of the month update thread in your region for folks to check in to see how others are faring, and to post their status.

6. post photos of your SFG - and encourage others to do so - to stimulate conversations, share ideas, and let others know that there are MANY ways to have fun and be creative with SFG.

7. Encourage others to post. This can be done in the initial greeting. example:"Hi SnuggleBunny1986. Welcome to the SFG Forum. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Someone here is bound to have an answer. And please share your experiences with SFG, and any tips or tricks you might have learned. Oh, and if you have any pics of your SFG please post them! Thanks." OR you can post a general announcement welcoming everyone to the region and ask for their input. Here's an example of a message I posted in the Lower South regional forum:

In case you missed the memo the Lower South spans the hill country of Texas to the coast of South Carolina. Here's a map for reference:
http://www.garden.org/regional/report/description/full/10

I'd like to encourage everyone to please introduce yourselves - especially any Certified SFG Teachers out there.

Goodness knows we have our challenges gardening in the heat and humidity of our region. Thankfully we have SFG to make our efforts so much more rewarding than they might be otherwise. Please share your experiences, your past & present success and any questions you might have. Chances are someone will have an answer.

8. Some newcomers are shy and feel they have nothing of value to contribute. The off-topic forum and the specialized forums like food & recipes and the seed exchange are areas they may feel more comfortable posting.

9. Last but not least: from Theresa, the founder of the SFG forum:
"Asking a question to the new member is a good start to keeping them posting.
Asking questions even if you know the answer, is a good way to keep them posting.
If someone posts a picture, always compliment, find something good to say."

There seems to be lots of interest in partners sharing the host position. I am totally open to this and encourage it if you think you can make your region better by partnering up
If you think you would like a partner. Try and find one! Both of you can do a little blurp on yourself and then work together on the regional aspects of the description
Have fun with it!!

I am not stepping down, nor do I want to. But, last year, we stumbled onto something in this region that I think really helped others out. We informally divided the regions into thirds, and reported based on those boundaries....sort of.

I was wanting to expand on this idea this spring, but NakedRooster has already rung the bell for us. I love this region, and love being the RH, but it's a big region......really big. There are lots of subtle climate differences from my house to yours. I wouldn't mind at all sharing some of the reporting, writing, etc, duties with some of you. We have a HUGE Cincinnati contingent, and I'm looking directly at some of you over in the eastern reaches of our region. You guys up in the Dakotas and Iowa have my eye, too, because your climatology is pretty easy to distinguish from mine.

If you are at all interested in collaborating with me this coming spring, PM NakedRooster (copy me in if you can) and let him/me know that you are willing to fit into HIS requirements he posted.

I think it would be fun to have a few of you to chat with about ideas/themes/reports. I encourage any of you to talk with NakedRooster about his offer.

Anyone up to co-hosting the Mid-Atlantic region with me?

Hey there folks would anyone like to share hosting with me?

Ha-v-v

Let's keep all Regional Host requests here please. It makes it way to hard for me to keep track of if they start getting scattered through all the threads. I really hoped "partnering" could happen via pm's, but if you think posting here will make it more visible, I can live with that. As long as it doesn't get out of hand I do need to keep it contained though, or it will be a real mess for me.
Thanks and good luck!!

nKedrOoStEr wrote:Let's keep all Regional Host requests here please. It makes it way to hard for me to keep track of if they start getting scattered through all the threads. I really hoped "partnering" could happen via pm's, but if you think posting here will make it more visible, I can live with that. As long as it doesn't get out of hand I do need to keep it contained though, or it will be a real mess for me.
Thanks and good luck!!

Sure thing, didnt think of the "scatteredness". Hope we didnt upset the apple cart too much

No worries. It's still rollin along on 3 wheels

nKedrOoStEr wrote:No worries. It's still rollin along on 3 wheels

LOLOLOL Turning a corner too ? Lololololol

The problem with doing via PM is I don't really know who is in my region. I know it's under their picture, but my rememberer just don't work like it used to.

Kim's got a good point there, NR!

And before the techies ask: we can't sort by regions because we don't have database access. The default criteria we can sort by can be seen by clicking 'Members' in the green nav bar at the top of every page, and click 'Sort By'. Sorry, it's limited.

She does have a good point. That's pretty much why I moved it all here to one spot. I know it would be nice to have it done in the regions, but I started having visions of it getting out of control and scattered about. My rememberer not so good either, AND the amount of pm's I get is a lot to keep track of. I at least need it all in one place and this is the best option I came up with.
The other reason I put it all here is because I saw the other requests dropping quickly down the latest topics list. Putting it all in one topic will bring the posts here and hopefully keep it in the latest topics list longer.
Once they drop off the latest list, no one is going to see them...
I know it's not ideal, but my hope is to keep it a little more manageable and visible.

My hope is that the people interested (from my region) will PM you, NR, with their interest/intro and copy me into the message. I think we (the RHs) were putting a message in a place we felt people would look, too.

The consolidation is great, especially if it helps you track things. However, any inquiries should probably be handled through PMs to avoid any public/privacy issues...so people remain comfortable.

Just a heads up. The Upper South Region is now in need of a host as well.

I really love this place. so much great information and great people. I would love to helpout but think better after I have a growing season under my belt. Since I am such a newbie

Maybe Al and I can share the duties for the Northern CA and Coastal Valleys. We're in the Central Valley of CA but our zones, etc fit with Northern CA and that's where we've posted everything about our Apollo Garden now growing nicely into our second season!