I think you guys are analyzing the wrong angles of this. While shilling is important, it looks like a timezone issue to me, some of these events I have only ever seen during EU times, and many of the NA's are not even attempting to put in the effort for them or they are just working on their own solo projects.

You want your events to pan out, you have to go across the globe and shill to the most active timezone, otherwise you are working with EU's only.