SIGs - Special Interest Groups, are a vital part of any Computer User Group. The WEAV User Group in Victoria, Canada maintains six SIGs which meet monthly, in addition to our main monthly General Meeting. The following is an article prepared for WEAV as advice to our incoming SIG Chairs. You may adapt this article for use in Your user group, but please give credit to WEAV and the author.

Welcome SIG Chairs! Here's some info about strategies to boost attendance at SIG meetings and promote our SIGs generally. Our SIGs are a great asset to our group, and we want to continue to boost their attendance. The following procedures are designed to ease communication and act as guidelines to bring some uniformity of approach and execution to help benefit our SIG activities.

First the Basics: Announce your meetings: You do this two ways.

About 10 days in advance of the SIG Meeting post an attractively worded email invitation to your SIG members email listserve. Mention what will be discussed, invite them to turn out & make it sound encouraging.

About 2 or 3 days in advance of the meeting post a slightly modified message to the general membership email listserve. Invite them to come and try out your SIG as one of the benefits of membership. If you don't have a listserve, try the telephone!

Topic choices can come from yours and members interests, news articles you encounter, or interesting problems you're trying to solve in your own endeavors.

Once in a while mention what has been discussed lately on your SIG mailing list.

Post the relevant updated info to the User Group CALENDAR page. Mostly this info stays the same Location, Date and Time. There is a generic default category for Meeting Subject matter. For each meeting a more specific topic can be announced each month. Again, about 10 days in advance is good, or as soon as you know your new topic.

At the User Group Monthly General Meetings: Be ready to respond when called upon at the Monthly General Meeting

 Mention SIG meeting Date, Time, Location and Topic.

Try to sound upbeat and encouraging in front of the membership, so as to increase participation. You answer should be short and sweet, only about 30 seconds.

Mention that we have a SIG SIGNUP Sheet at the front desk for new members to join the various SIGs.

Consider writing an occasional article for your group based on your research and discussions at recent SIG meetings. Post these along to your Group Editor for inclusion in the User Group Newsletter. If you don't like to write, just jot your thoughts down and pass them along to your Editior, who'll probably be glad to polish it up for you.

A Little Bit More:

Establish and embellish a Webpage for your SIG. This can live on your own main home or biz site ( or on the User Group site) and be linked to from the Group site via the Group SIGs Page. (Internal linkage to your own site is at your discretion).

This page should display the Group Logo as an active link to the User Group Homepage in the form of a Plaque or Banner (which you can download off the Group Homepage. You should also include the User Group Navigation Table at the bottom of each page you host, if appropriate, so visitors can easily access the other parts of the Group Site. On your SIG Webpage you should try to list a variety of the following:

an explanation of what the page is and how to use it.

The basics of where/when the SIG meets and how to get on its mailing list.

any tutorials, resource links, software tips and tricks and other SIG info you deem useful.

Whatever else your imagination conjures up!

Once or Twice a Year:

This is the fun part. Once or twice a year we provide an opportunity for SIG Chairs and/or their members to present a short 6 to 10 minute synopsis of what their SIG is and does at the monthly General Meeting. This is to explain the SIG to newbies and help to bring new members into the SIG. Ideally this presentation would be driven by computer (online or canned from say, a laptop) and be centered on the SIG's Website content. Sounds great, Yes? :-)

 We are confident that if you apply these guidelines attendance will rise and your SIGs will flourish. Best of luck!