About this time last year, Beer & Blog began to suffer growing pains, the weather was warming up, the pools were opening and tweetups and other events were popping up like crazy. Thursday night is a very popular event night and being that it is also the traditional Beer & Blog night, conflicts arose.
We settled in at Bar Louie after some issues with the Freakin Frog, and things went well for the most part, through out the summer. We had our good weeks and our bad weeks, but we survived thanks to a few people who shouldered the work load. Those people, Lori (@PokerVixen), Manya (@ManyaS), Pam (@StormyIz) & Sara (@Sara_Mooney) for the most part. I am not trying to make light of the many people who have helped in the past, this was always meant to be a democracy.
As summer turned to fall, we fell out with Bar Louie. They became increasingly less friendly, the service was horrible, the turn over in staff was giving us fits. It was time to once again move on and find a new venue that could accomodate us. However attendance was at an all time low and we began meeting in a small group at Gordon Biersch, things were in peril.
But I chose Gordon Biersch because it was close to my job, I could get their quickly, reserve the neccessary seats and if no one else showed up, which was often the case, at least I could get a good beer. For me personally, Beer & Blog has always been about the beer first and blogging second. My interest in craft beer was growing and as long as I was the main person organizing the event, I organized around the growing craft beer community in Las Vegas.
The holidays came and went and it was time to kick off the new year and try and get some fresh life pushed into Beer & Blog. We managed to pick up a few new people, who were interested in blogging and talking blogging. A rotating schedule of locations seemed to level out the attendance and we mended our fences with the Freakin Frog. We worked on deals with new places, things seemed like they were starting to click.
But Thursdays continued to be hampered by tweetups. But no one wanted to come together on a consensus for a new day or a schedule that was paired down to a couple weeks a month. People complained about the event not being on their side of town, not considering the people on the other side of town who have the same complaints. Facebook invites were ignored for the most part, to the point where it became useless to even send them out. Other events that were posted were generally ignored as well, and suddenly we find ourselves back on the cusp of summer and all those events that derailed us last May are back.
5 weeks in a row, there have been tweetups and other group gatherings, when up to 3/4 of your group attend these events it makes it hard to get people to just show up for a drink and chat. New comers who tweeted at the Beer & Blog twitter account were encouraged to attend, yet how they would find us, I have no idea. Big events came and went, with really no attendance of Beer & Blog people, sure they cost money. I get that can be a deterant, but you cannot claim nothing in is going on, just because you choose not to attend the event.
So now we get a bitter Twitter war because someone choose to bitch in public that they do not like how the volunteers are handling the situation. People who barely attend suddenly have something to say, where were all of you in the weeks and months of trying to get people to chime in and give input? Where are you when a venue needs to be locked up for a gathering? Where are you other than when you feel like showing up, to sit at tables someone else has saved, take advantage of specials someone else has negotiated or a location that someone else has scouted?
Finally we come to me, I have been trying to keep Beer & Blog afloat, for the most part only a few people really know the extent of that, apparently. I have talked endlessly to people, getting their input, trying to get them to help, and trying to make sure I was not stepping on any toes. I have sat by myself and held tables when no one has shown up and could not even be bothered to say they were not showing up. I have paid the unpaid bills when we got stuck on one check and people have not accounted for the %18 tax and gratuity we have often been hit with. I have blogged, I have tweeted, I have given up my Thursday nights just about every night of the past year and a half.
For the past month I have been in the middle of a bitter, draining situation with my job. It has required me to work endless amounts of overtime, put a lot of stress on my home life and generally driven me to the point where I barely blog or tweet. So as you may have guessed it has trickled down to Beer & Blog as well. I was announced before the LVIMA and #MGM Tweetup that there would be no Beer & Blog for those two weeks. The following week I was able to squeeze in a late organized Beer & Blog at McMullans, last week my work situation completely exploded and for the first time I was unable / unwilling to do anything about Beer & Blog.
At McMullans I had mentioned to several of the attendees my intent to open up my long standing Tuesday night visit to Gordon Biersch to the Beer & Blog peeps. That was to be started tonight, ironically enough. So there you are, you want to talk to me or bitch at me for what a shit job I am doing, come on down.
-Rally
The Slider Truck
14 years ago