Future of the Romeos Forums

[JerryM100]

What is the future of the Romeos website and forums? 

As we all know, the Covid 19 virus has shut down life in a big way all around the world. And it has touched our community here in the Romeos as we have lost a few friends. Most of the regional ride coordinators have stopped announcing weekly rides, the only exception being Fox down in the Texas Rio Grande Valley. 

And we have the added detraction of the winter riding off-season. 

I can see in the website performance statistics the decline of traffic over the months. Fewer posts and fewer people visiting because there isn't much going on here. 

Which is a real shame. Because as people stay home from the virus or because it is friggin cold they naturally spend more time on the computer (many people, I think). Whether it is email with family and friends, Facebook, Netflix, Youtube, Zoom video calls, or many, many websites there is a tremendous amount of information and entertainment to be found online. 

So how can we somehow make the Romeos forums more useful to serve our motorcycling community better? 

After a number of emails and phone conversations and much thinking I have a few ideas. The best way is to add value to the forums by adding more content that people want to see. But what kind of content? 

There are dozens and dozens of motorcycling websites and we are not going to compete with them. What makes the Romeos unique is our regional focus. We are naturally geographically focused because we ride motorcycles. But we are virtual because we use a website to post the information and photos to share with everyone. 

So I think the best way to try to serve our community better is to encourage people to post their personal experiences and comments and pictures. In other words, I would encourage people to post their own individual rides and experiences with their motorcycles (rides, modifications, ideas, dreams, maintenance tips, whatever). 

As part of this as well I would encourage the various ride coordinators to permit and invite their members to post in their respective forums. Most of the regional forums have only posted ride announcements. Let's try to start having some other conversations. Start by asking questions. Where did you ride last summer? Do you have any pics? Did you ride with friends? 

Also, someone suggested in a phone call (Mick I think) that I might consider adding some "how-to" posts to help people register so they can post, how to reset their passwords, how to post pictures, etc. I have started that and will create some of those posts soon. And I will also consider opening up to other technical suggestions and questions to help people use the forums and maybe their computers in general. 

So nuff for now, I just want to get this started and see where it goes. Let me know what you think.

Jerry M
Romeo Riders Website Administrator