The Skeptic Next Door

I have made numerous web searches and have been unable to find a local skeptic or atheist group, so I have decided to organize one myself. This is my progress so far.

Step 1. Create a basic web site.

1. Create a google email. Redirect the email to your personal email. If you publish this email on a web page it is likely to get lots of spam.
2. Create a google web site. You could use some other service for this, google is free and easy.
3. Optional, register a domain name with someone like GoDaddy.com. Pay the extra $10 to hide your identity. Don’t buy any of the millions of options. Forward your new domain to the Google website. The advantage of this is you can publish this address and when you outgrow Google you can just redirect it to a future website.

Step 2. Go fishing. Find some people

1. Google search for city and skeptic hits about a dozen people on meetup.com who are also looking for a group. Send them all a message with a possible date/time for a meeting and a link to the website. Ask them about date and location.
2. Create a facebook group. Invite friends that may be skeptical. You could also do something like this on MySpace, but I don’t use it much. Point the group to your website.
3. Create a kijiji add. In the text of your add, list the web site. You could also use Craigs list.

Step 3. Pick a date and location.

1. Pick something central not too far in the future.
2. Update your web page, facebook pages, online adds with the meeting details.

Step 4. Go fishing some more

1. Email any friends you think might be interested. Try not to overdo this. You don’t want a few strangers and a bunch of existing friends.
2. Check skeptic and skeptical inquirer magazines for people who are associated with the magazine who may be in your area. Contact them.
3. Send an email to alison@randi.org at the JREF, asking for your event to be added to their event list.

Step 5. Pray that someone will show up.

The meeting is in 5 days. One or two of the meetup people have made it to the facebook group. I hope to have 6 to 10 people

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 6:49 am and is filed under skeptic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.