Location, location, location

In real estate, one of the most important considerations is location. While not real estate agents, our FBE team also learned a lot about location in the last two weeks. Two weeks ago we held Friday service time in the WH1 lounge which is one of the more out-of-the-way lounges in West Hall. We had about 12 or 15 people show up to knit and watch a movie and (in comparison to most of the previous Friday service times) it was a pretty good showing. Then, last week, we held Friday service time in the lounge on the third floor of West Hall so that we would be out of the way of the Candidate's Weekend tours that go through WH1 and we ended up with 25 or 30 people watching the movie for Amnesty International that we were showing and either making posters for the Like This FBE team or knitting.
We usually hold Friday service time in WH1 partially because it's a little out of the way and it's usually empty during Friday afternoons meaning we're not taking anyone's works space. However, no one walks through that lounge unless they live in 1 North. On the other hand, everyone who lives on the third or forth floor has to go through the WH3 lounge and people from the first and second floors often go to the third floor to see what's happening. We don't always want to hold Friday service time in WH3 because people often use that space for other things on Friday afternoon and we don't want to kick them out of their space, but looking at the different turn-outs of the last two weeks is a good reminder of how important location can be.
It makes sense that we should hold Friday service activities in high-traffic areas because of social proof. The more people are doing something, the more others will want to copy them. This also goes along with the Heath brothers' saying of "rally the herd." By holding activities in the third floor lounge instead of the first floor lounge we were rallying people to participate by letting them see that others were already participating.
In a way, we were also directing the rider because many people wander aimlessly around WH on Friday after classes are done because they don't want to work and telling them that they should stick around to watch a movie or knit directs the rider and gives them something to do. So using social proof or rallying the herd and directing the rider are definitely good approaches to getting more people to come to Friday service activities.
Because social proof and directing the rider are good ways of getting more people to participate in Friday service, we got much higher participation levels in WH3 than in WH1. It is unrealistic to assume that we can always use the third floor lounge for Friday service because it is a public area that is used for a variety of activities, but we should always consider location when deciding where to hold Friday service because when it comes to getting people to do community service, along with finding a good spot for a restaurant, it all comes down to location.