It's that time of the year again! Love it or hate it, Freshers waits for no one. It's always an interesting one - the first test for a new committee; the first real engagement with the new intake. Freshers can very much make or break a society. So what can you do to ensure a smooth and great Freshers for your society? Join us as we take a look at the tried and tested ways to ensure your society breaks into its demographic!
Your number one source of members, at least for most societies, is going to be your Freshers' Fair stand. Making your stand erm... stand out is quintessential to making a good impact and you can do this through a number of ways. Having your stand representative of your society and its activities is a great start. Posters of games you guys play, your society's esports jersey on display, maybe even a console or laptop set up with an engaging title. If your stand looks busy it'll make your engagement come naturally. Not too busy however or you'll risk your prospective members being overwhelmed. Also make sure to have enough staff at any given time on hand to help. Make sure you have someone available to answer questions while another committee member is busy talking but don't over exert yourself or your team. The Freshers' Fair portion of the week can be a long slog even without the tiredness from overworking yourself.
Next, online engagement. Have you ever heard of a little platform called Discord? Discord has very quickly become the standard communication instrument of gaming communities everywhere and gaming societies are no exception. It isn't just enough to have a Discord server, it needs to be active with friendly and welcoming discussion. Having the right amount of channels is a key way to ensure it's active. In the past I've seen Discord servers that have too many channels and their engagement has suffered for it, with slow discussions that peter out because there isn't enough activity across the server to merit the amount of channels it has. Ultimately you and your committee have to be the judge of what does and doesn't work. Some Discords are active with just two or three channels, others have over 10 that all see regular posting.
Finally, taster events. Now these come in many different shapes and sizes, from pub crawls to LANs to just normal weekly meets. The general gist of it is to have something for everyone. The core activities of your society will be the biggest defining factor in working out what activities to undertake. During my time at Swansea we held a wide range of Freshers' Week meets including regular weekly meets, lazertag, pub gatherings and even 24 hour LANs.
Apart from these three things there will also be specific methods and tools your society can use. For instance making use of your society's achievements (Warwick I'm looking at you), big UK-wide LANs your society has attended or potentially even giving away free stuff.
Have you got other ways we haven't mentioned? Comment them down below.
Photo Credits (in order of appearance): Keele Esports Society, Newcastle University Gaming Society & Samuel Maynard (Swansea Gaming Society).
