Just looking to see whether there’s any interest in starting meetings in Western Sydney, say in Parramatta. I’m sure we’ve got many members in that area who might not be able to make it to the monthly Sydney meetings, and might want something a bit closer to home and at a more convenient time.
If not, fantastic: the Sydney meetings are doing their job 
I’d come to Parramatta if meetings were held.
So would I if anybody wanted to talk policy…
If you’re trying to start up meetings in a new area do you consider ways of potentially promoting it more widely as a kind of ‘introductory meeting to establish a ____ area Crew’? Try to think of places the meeting could be advertised in the area, networks it could be promoted through, inviting potential new members to come along. If it’s a suitable venue perhaps our ‘Leader’ or another rep could give a 5-10min presentation about the party for prospective new members.
If you were doing this in regional centres you may even be able to get local media coverage promoting it. Since most regional media have probably never heard of us before, pitch them a story about the ‘launch of a new party in the area’ and some will pick it up. It’d be great to do something like this in my area on the north coast one day, but I wouldn’t want to do it if only 2 people turned up, we’d have to be confident we knew a decent number are coming if we’re making the effort of doing a publicly-promoted thing. I might think about this again in a few months.
It ultimately depends on the goal in my opinion. Initially most meetings start to encourage local members to get together and discuss issues. I think this has been the main reason Sydney meetings have been so effective compared to, say, the Adelaide meetings. It’s usually better to have a core group of 5–10 people who are already meeting regularly so that non-members are met with activity rather than one or two people each month drinking together.
Sydney meetings have been successful largely due to the diversity of attendees: it’s pretty normal to get 10 regulars turning up, representing a pretty broad cross-section of the Party. A recruitment meeting would necessarily work differently, but you could promote a regular meeting as a recruitment meeting once you knew a decent number of members are already going to turn up.