Before you go too much farther down this path, let me suggest that you search for additional information on two other, now defunct, organizations. The International Mead Association (which ran the International Mead Festival, among other things, for a few years) and a precursor, the American Mead Association. Medsen brings up a very salient point in his post, and at least in my opinion it is one factor that led to the demise of those two earlier associations. Bottom line - you need to develop a clear and unambiguous answer to the question, "What's in it for me?" whenever you begin to form a professional association of any kind, or it will tend to founder. Unless you're ready to market the concept the same way that you'd sell a new piece of fermentation equipment to an existing meadery, with a clear demonstration of how it could increase their profitability, they'll likely politely decline to participate. They have their hands full keeping their businesses going as it is, and that will tend to be their principal (if not their exclusive) focus.
I second that one. The first version of the American Mead Association was founded by Pamela Spence, and was the most successful of all the versions. Pamela started small, kept it small, had excellent contacts and supporters, and the newsletter she published was well received, and now well remembered by those of us who were subscribers.
It was a labor of love, and got to be too much for Pamela -- she passed the reins of the Association on to Susanne Price. Susanne did well, however, the organization began to go under once she partnered with Julian Strekel. Susanne perished in a tragic motor vehicle accident, and not long afterwards a number of legal problems surfaced. I don't know all the details, the honey supply company they ran was stiffing customers from what I heard, and there were other problems. Julian and the other board members quietly left town and were not heard from again.
Keith Wanless and Andy LaMorte attempted to revive the AMA but found there were too many legal problems. At the time, they couldn't even use the name.
The International Mead Association was very ambitious, but lost a lot of steam eventually, likely because the people who were involved were all volunteering their time, and didn't have enough time to give.
A common problem I saw, in talking with many of the people involved, as well as participating in some of the efforts, was starting out with plans that were too large, too ambitious, given the starting resources for getting the organization going. It's not reasonable, for example, to have a start up organization with a level for commercial folk, charge a fee to join, when you haven't gotten the organization itself up and running.
Just my humble opinion, I've often thought that the reason Pamela Spence ran the most successful version of a mead organization was that she started small, could maintain consistency on the basis of the resources she had to work with, and she filled a need.
Here's a link to Dick Dunn's comments on the old AMA, originally posted on the venerable Mead Lover's Digest:
http://lists.ansteorra.org/pipermail/bvc-ansteorra.org/1998-February/000042.html
I wish I could remember the source of where I saw this -- an identification of key factors needed for a successful grassroots organization. One, a publication; two, a national meeting; three, a viable mission statement that meets a need.
Generally speaking, startup organizations deficient in any of these areas tend to go under.
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