In my experience, you don't have to be the most experienced or talented traceur to foster a community or take on a leadership role. Willingness to step up and do it is what really counts. Honestly it doesn't always even take that much time or work.
In Santa Rosa (hour north of SF) basically I just copied what I saw people had done elsewhere. I had help too, because I found a training partner (Adroit aka Michael) through SFPK after I'd been training alone for a month or two. We figured out when we could both meet every week. Sometimes we can do twice a week, but we try to always have at least one standing session a week organized and posted online (on SFPK). Then we try to always make the SFPK Monthly Jam when people come from all over Nor Cal. Traveling makes the whole experience even more epic. Also, the entire SFPK community helped with encouragement, advice, and letting us host a couple monthlies now here in Santa Rosa.
Our group isn't huge, but we do get 5-10 people a week usually. I used to try to force it a little, invite everyone I knew to come train, but now I just let it happen. People pop up online and I hit 'em up. Sometimes they get serious for a few months then get busy with other things, sometimes they stay and we all become BFFs. We may not have a huge community, but we do have a very well connected community because we've visited people all over California, and Michael and I even went to the COPK National Jam last summer. When more people do show up (there were 4 new people today!), we'll be ready to help them in their journey. As parkour keeps growing in America, I think most areas will tend to start up in a similar grassroots fashion. All it takes is one or a few people to stick with it, make themselves available and have fun.
