I occasionally visit the Vienna Wireless Society. They have about 1/3 large pizza and pop for each person. This very effectively keeps membership high.
In contrast, I belong to the Fairfax Toastmaster's Club, which gives no pizza and charges $46 each year to-boot. They loose 40 percent of their members each year.
I bought an HT four months ago, getting surprised at how little traffic hits 2 meters, 10 meters, and 6 meters. Hopefully, if I eventually get an HF rig, I will hear more traffic.
I have been a Linux Zealot since 1994. Linux has similarities to the Ham Radio Community. The Linux community has install-fests, where people volunteer to install Linux on an Intel, Alpha, PowerPC, or Sparc computer. Debian Linux regular user's group runs 80-250 mail messages each day, archiving them for other subscribers to solve their problems. Their email-users-group, help search, and bug tracking index are better than any I have seen, better than Sun Computer, better than Microsoft. I have noticed a HAM set of packages in Debian Linux. This was confusing for a while because a version of Debian Linux last year was called "Ham", as all versions are named after characters like "Ham" in "Toy Story". Why? Because at least one of the founders is a heavy with Pixar Studios. He and numberous of the other 400 Debian developers are HAMS. Indeed, at one point I thought all Debian developers were HAMS, but that is probably not quite true.
September 11, 1999,