REsponse to Lucho

I think that all the 5 points that Lucho makes are relevant reasons why people are not participating in the Livelihoods Network and its subgroups. But I think the most important of them might be the lack of clarity of purpose, i.e. what will they get out of it.
People tend to participate if they feel they have something to gain - e.g. they will learn something useful, or get some kudos, or disseminate their work to an appropriate audience. I think it needs to be expressed much more clearly just what people can hope to gain, and how it will be achieved. Then we need to make sure that those expectations are actually realised! It takes effort to contribute - even to an informal disucssion group - so people need to see that their investment of time will be rewarded somehow.
I think that this requires some very active encouragement in the early stages: lots of prodding and contribution from a facilitator on a regular basis to ensure that people dont forget about the group, and that they are getting something. I think people tend to copy behaviours, so if they dont see anyone else contributing, then they wont. But if they see others contributing more then they think that this must be something worth doing and will join in!
Obviously the topic also has to be quite clear and pertinent to peoples' interests too. In the case of the markets group then I think this is probably not bad. For the overall Network list this is more of a problem. Its a pretty broad subject area so perhaps people are not sure what they can legitimately contribute to the list.
Those are a few thoughts for now...
Kath