Humility certainly is not for the weak! I hope you were being tongue in cheek there, Clinton Hammond. The good ones I have seen never need to assert themselves before their colleagues. Their work does the talking. Personally, I did always feel that I was failing if I failed to get a crowd. If you don't stumble on the ways to do that yourself, watching a few old pros will give you some ideas. There are buskers who can make money from "passing", but I have always found that less satisfying. The willingness to keep at it when people ignore you at first is important, but I would be thinking a step ahead and asking myself, "What will make them stop and listen?" Keep the thread going and see if we can get some input from Steve Rich and InObu.