Cohousing-L Mailing List: New group in Hartford forming/lot of interest

[Tonka444 (Tonka444]

Hello--

My cohousing group, Greater Hartford Cohousing, has been meeting now for 
about two months.  We now how a vision statement and are starting to market 
the group.  We are five households. 

We have hired a speaker for a slide show presentation for Thursday.  We have 
probably posted over 500 fliers and the talk is listed in the coming events 
sections of three different papers.  

We have no idea who is coming or not coming as we have no R.S.V.P. or 
anything.  Some of us are concerned that we will only be staring at each 
other Thursday night but with the coming events postings, etc. I am feeling 
pretty positive.

But here is the great news.  A reporter from the Hartford Courant (our big 
paper here, circulation 750,000!) wants to write a large story on the 
cohousing movement, with a photographer going to Amherst for built cohousing 
shots, and she wants to interview our group.  We are Connecticut's first 
group.  Her editor wants it to be a section A, front page photo story.  This 
story will also coincide with the cohousing conference coming up.

On top of that, a very popular drive home radio show is interested in 
interviewing someone from our group soon.

While this is great for marketing our group, we are still trying to figure 
out what consensus decision making is.  I am afraid that we will be deluged 
with interest and new members and we will not be organized enough to handle 
it.

Sorry this is so lengthy......here is my question.  Should our group hire a 
cohousing consultant to work with us now?  We are not efficient with meeting 
times and tend to talk in a random way.  I think we need to get our act 
together before others jump on and realize we don't.  When have other groups 
decided it was time to hire a consultant?

Thanks for info.

Shelly DeMeo
Greater Hartford Cohousing