I'm just wondering what local groups are doing for community outreach. Are new people joining?
Since the beginning of our local Bitcoin group here in Vienna, "Bitcoin Austria", we had a total of 12 meetings with about 8-15 people each. The core group meets more often to work on various projects and although we don't do much advertising, we continuously have an influx of new people: about 1-2 new people show up on every meeting.
Over time the knowledge gap within the audience widened and it became somewhat difficult to keep it interesting for everybody. We are now trying to split the meetings in two parts and start with an introductory talk about Bitcoin which is actively advertised to newcomers and the main part where more advanced discussions are planned.
One of our major task is to reach out to other people, groups or organizations, which might be interested in Bitcoin (banking reformers, alternative currency advocates, media artists,...). It is surprising to see how appealing Bitcoin is to many different groups for very different reasons. Of course, some hope for Bitcoin to become something it inherently cannot achieve, but still.
The fact that (much like this very forum) there seems to be a constant stream of new people becoming aware of and interested in Bitcoin makes me optimistic about the state of the community. We would love to hear from other local groups - how are you doing, what are your topics, how do you deal with newcomers, do you do advertising?
