Rebooting a paused community?

Q: Have you every rebooted a paused community and if so what did you do, please?

I'm in an interesting position.

8 years ago I started a weekly in-person breakfast meetup in Westminster, London, off the back of a popular one-off unconference. It was held in a Civil Service canteen that served excellent and cheap food. Anyone interested in making the public sector better was welcome, whether they were a public servant or not.

It got really popular, spawned a whole load of other things, and was run by a couple of other people over the proceeding years. After 4 years it was paused for various reasons.

5 weeks ago I restarted after a chat with some of the former organisers. I've done little promotion, except for a few posts on BlueSky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and all the relevant Slacks I'm in. A handful of people turn up each week.

Several attendees are concerned or frustrated that more people aren't turning up, so this morning we started a document to think about what we could do.

Key will be some user research, starting with a poll to attendees to tease out why (or not) they turn up.

So, to repeat my question:

Q: Have you every rebooted a paused community and if so what did you do, please?

Feel free to reply on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Mastodon or X (Twitter).

PS: Thanks to Derek Alton to prompting me to post this, after today's 1st Global Community Manager in Gov Monthly Community Call that he runs. 

PPS: I'll also joing the 2nd call today at 4pm BST(UTC+1) / 11am EDT(UTC-4) / 8am PST (UTC-7).