Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

This section is to provide Midas Owners Club News.

Moderator: The Midas Forum Staff

Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

Postby ACourtney » Fri May 15, 2015 9:13 pm

With such a great turn out at Stoneleigh, an excellent marquee and a really friendly bunch of Midas owners on the club stand, I think it is fair to say the club excelled itself with the anniversary celebrations. A lot of the thanks for that has to go to the club's officers who did such a great job of organizing it all. Someone commented to me that it was the best club AGM that they had attended (of any club not just the MOC) and I think that reflects well on the committee and the members present that it zipped along this year in such a jovial fashion.

Sadly though, that will be the last time that the current committee will be organizing an event for us. As Kelvin pointed out in the "Stoneleigh May 3rd" thread, most of the committee is standing down for one reason, or another, and I wholeheartedly agree with him that we owe them all a huge thank you. Not just for Stoneleigh, but for many years service during time which they have turned the club's fortunes around. Ten years ago the club membership was falling and it was a struggle to get a magazine out at all. Now the club has over 100 members again and we get four joint magazines each year along with regular newsletters.

Now I could simply finish by echoing the call for some volunteers to take up the vacant posts, but you may have guessed from the title of this thread that that was not my intention.

I would like to invite you all, club members and non-club members alike, to have a good think about what the club is now and what the club should be in the future and then to contribute your ideas as to how the club can move forward.

We need to open a debate now as to what the members want from the club and also what the non-members would want to see the club do that would really make them want to join it.

I know that a lot of people don't like the idea of committees, or don't have the time to drive half way across the country for a committee meeting. Not to mention another dozen, or so reasons, that would stop us all from being more active within the club.
However, as our outgoing committee proved this year, it doesn't need to be all dour faced reports. Yes, some of that is still going to be necessary. The club is not going to organize itself by magic. It will still need club officers, or at least people who are happy to take some responsibility to get things done, in the future. With improved communications, however, using email and things like Skype, that allow multiple way discussions to take place over the internet, the need to give up a day to attend a committee meeting is fast disappearing. Perhaps, there are other ways of organizing the club that we haven't considered yet.

We have the opportunity to start the discussion now and hopefully by the time of my open day in July (yes, July 19th) we will have some ideas to take the club forwards into its next 30 years.
User avatar
ACourtney
 
Posts: 488
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:22 pm
Location: Oxford

Re: Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

Postby Jin » Fri May 15, 2015 10:26 pm

Good call mate, and your right, now does seem a Good time to move things forward and thank those for all they have done in the run up to now.
Ass a relative newcomer I can only draw from stonleigh and chit chat on here but from what I can see the magic formula is there for a great fun club to be part of

I'm not aware if you already do this or not so please excuse my lack of experience, but years ago when I was in the 306 cabriolet club, members would regularly arrange club meets themselves for all to attend, so alongside the usual core shows and events there would be about 4-5 Gatherings all arranged by members either local to them or somewhere they liked or wanted to go to and with the backing of the club others who wanted to all joined in.
In this format we did Coventry transport museum, Weston park, billing aquadrome, gaydon, Blackpool, Melton mowbury etc all as one offs except billing that everyone loved so much.
This way most members nationally got at least one chance to attend an event close to them or opt to arrange one themselves, it's just helped fill in the gaps between the bigger events and stepped away from the same old same old, I found the last motoring club I was in a tad tedious as it was just the same people parking in the same spot at the same events talking to the same people about the same old things.

Slightly trickier these days now with 2 nippers in tow but I'm sure I could offer up something and see if anyone else fancies a go?
https://easywider.co.uk/ universal flexible wheel arch extensions
Jin
 
Posts: 454
Joined: Fri Aug 01, 2014 10:33 pm

Re: Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

Postby Mtrike » Sat May 16, 2015 10:32 pm

As new member I'm hesitant to put my thoughts forward but.
My last club was the Berkeley Owners Club small, plastic and very eccentric cars but undergoing somewhat of a resurgence. It seems to me that the Midas is beginning to move into that realm as the body survives well, subframes can be substituted and the engines become less available. The advantage is the bodies can be resurrected and there must be a fair few undiscovered one around. The club management structure is a bit old fashioned ( not the committee I hasten to add) but a lot could be done more remotely. Perhaps the answer is one/two central meets a year and then members going to their more local classic events. What this needs is a move from being a kit car to being a classic car and if any kit can do that it should be the Midas, when I go to local events other classic owners always recognise it. A big advantage is that we have a commercial restorer/ provider. What we need now is to start to relieve the current committee of commitments they don't want any more whilst retaining their expertise and enthusiasm. Questions that we need to answer are :- Where to now? Who's volunteering? Do we charge enough for membership? Who's volunteering!!!!!
Sorry about the stream of consciousness.
User avatar
Mtrike
 
Posts: 67
Joined: Sun May 26, 2013 1:08 pm
Location: Northants

Re: Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

Postby davidj » Sun May 17, 2015 11:30 am

Hi Mike

Thanks for your thoughts all good ones but the only crucial one is " who is volunteering" This is the question that has been around since I joined the MOC many years ago. Your band of Committee is small but not by choice.

The volunteer has to be determined, logical and dogged. Lets have a few of you prepared to stand up and be counted.

Your current membership secretary, soon to be ex.

Regards David
davidj
 
Posts: 114
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 1:13 pm

Re: Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

Postby kelvink » Mon May 18, 2015 7:38 am

I had just spent ages writing reams and reams of thoughts and opinion on this and then Pooooofff!!! all gone just as I was submitting it all. :cry:

OK well one of the things I was saying was summed up by this video which I was including a link to.

http://on.ted.com/h0tbH

I'll try to write something again some time later on but in the meantime have a look at the video, it's a bit weighty but it's worth watching and then thinking about. It's applicable in many areas as well as the club
User avatar
kelvink
 
Posts: 636
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2012 8:12 am
Location: Dorset

Re: Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

Postby benofbrum » Mon May 18, 2015 1:25 pm

Thanks Kelvin for that link. Well worth watching and thinking about in relation to our club. The membership divides in may different ways, hobby value, type of usage, age, expertise and specific skills.
It was apparent at the AGM that one such divide was between those with basic computer expertise, who google, shop and send emails and those to whom swapping between operating systems and customising programmes is no big deal. As a generalisation these two groups tend to be those retired and with more uncommitted time and those working with computers as the latter. The trick will be to make best use of the two.
Alistair wrote specifically about committee structure, but do we need a parallel discussion on where the cars are going in the next 30 years. Midas's have bodies which are aerodynamically and space efficient. Since they were not initially designed to follow a fashion, they have never become out of fashion and have a long term future as long as part supply and regulations permit. At some point, re-engineering of at least suspensions will have to be undertaken.
Is this forum now funded by the owners club? if not, should it be?
benofbrum
 
Posts: 255
Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2012 11:58 pm

Re: Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

Postby kelvink » Mon May 18, 2015 2:10 pm

Quoting Alistair at the top of this thread….

Now I could simply finish by echoing the call for some volunteers to take up the vacant posts, but you may have guessed from the title of this thread that that was not my intention.

I would like to invite you all, club members and non-club members alike, to have a good think about what the club is now and what the club should be in the future and then to contribute your ideas as to how the club can move forward.

We need to open a debate now as to what the members want from the club and also what the non-members would want to see the club do that would really make them want to join it.




I thought a good place to start might be to step back a few years to the good old days and the heady highlights of the kit car days of the 1980s. It was a time when Britain was truly Great well at least with regards Kit Cars we really did lead the world and may still do today but without any doubt times have gotten harder for sure, however many of the orginal kit manufacturers still remain and some have even gone on to be the British Car industry I kid you not just look at Caterham, Westfield, Ultima and Noble for example.

Back in the 80s we had stacks of kits and manufacturers. Seriously popular kit car shows and well followed magazines. There was a healthy club scene, both on the tarmac and with dance floors. So how did this all happen. Well good communication was one thing, just pop along to WH Smith on the last Thurday of the month and pick up a copy of Kit Car magazine or perhaps Alternative Car mag or the new kid on the block Kit Cars and Specials to get your monthly fix. Then when the summer season was upon us you could go along to your local kit car show on the Cricket pitch or if you wanted to join a club and get out and about with some fellow enthusiasts you could go to Newark for the annual bash there. You would park up along side a bunch of other similar branded kits and hand over your Pound note or the new coin to join up and get a typed up newsletter posted to you in a brown envelope one a quarter.

You see those were the days when good communications meant old fashioned paper and ink. These were the days when at my place of work if I had an architect make enquireies about how to fire proof his high rise office block after speaking with me on the phone I’d pass him over to one of our Technical Sales department’s secrataries to make a tentative booking with a guy with a company car who’d be back in the office on Friday to confirm his diary and then call back all the enquiries to firm up and reserve a meeting. Mobile phones hadn’t even been invented but I do remember faxing our Northern agent with details of the new proposed Car Phones. You see we were cutting edge us lot we had a fax machine and a Telex!

How times have changed eh

So that brings me to today, or rather this weekend. You see I’m a member of a number of clubs, as I have no doubt many of you are too, some of you will have noticed I’ve got several odd vehicles and I’ve just become a manufacturer too. This weekend I was at Beaulieu Autojumble thanks to one of my local club The Wessex Car Club. It’s a club that like many clubs has an online forum and it’s through this that I found out that they have a regular pitch at Beaulieu Spring Autojumble where members can get in for a mere £5 and park their car right smack in the heart of the event. Not bad eh and it’s also a free club, yep you don’t pay a penny to be a member. So I posted yep I’ll be along with my Eco Exo R trike. One of the members sent me a PM to get the registration of my Trike and confirmed I had a pass now allocated to me to collect on the South gate where I only needed to speak with one of the members of the club who would also be on the gate and easily identifiable with a t-shirt and jacket sporting the club’s livery and logo.

Sure enough I arrived early morning was greeted with a “Hello Kelvin, here’s your pass, your screen sticker and I need to relieve you of your fiver. Follow the road and you’ll see the club stand, marquee and where to park between the clubs pennants.” So sure enough I drove up onto the club's pitch and was marshalled into neat parking bunches of 3 cars abreast dotted around the pitch by similarly attired members of the club doing a spot of marshalling.

Chatting with a few of the other people who’d brought their cars along to the event I found that several of them were new to the club and had joined because there were events to go along to where they could meet up with other like minded people who they had seen chatting online on the forum. There were a good variety of venues the club has been along to including track days both near and far such as Hulavingtom and Spa too.


Another club I’m a member of is the MEV Owners Group or MOG as they like to be known. Being that I’m now a manufacturer I’m ‘on the committee’ so to speak which is actually a group of forum moderators. We’ve never had a committee meeting as we have online discussions in sections of the forum which are only accessible by other forum moderators. It’s been quite busy of late there as Road Track Race recently went bust so there’s been a lot of work needing to be done to keep things running smoothly. but it’s all been done calmly and efficiently and effectively thanks to the online moderators discussion groups.

Anyone who knows Stuart Mills will know he’s a prolific designer and manufacturer but he’s got where he’s got also thanks to a loyal band of equally enthusiastic owners who built the online Owners Group and promote his vehicles through Social Media by simply chatting online about their vehicles. The only meetings that tend to be had are over a pint at the social gatherings at events such as Stoneleigh and the other days they organise such as at Curborough Sprint Circuit or Shakespear Country Raceway. 99% of things are sorted out online via the moderators forums.

By total contrast to the above is the Batter Vehicle Society. I used to be a member of this and was on the committee and indeed did produce a magazine for them called Plugged In which was a full colour A4 glossy magazine which could have easily sold in WH Smith. (I know this as we were told so by numerous newsagents) Sadly this organisation is very much dying and shrinking rapidly. Ironic really given that electric cars are now common place and nearly all the major manufacturers are building and selling electric cars There’s even Tesla for heaven’s sakes who are taking the world by storm. Jeremy Clarkeson has even been brought over to the ‘clean side’ by the BMW i8. And yet the BVS is dying, why? because it’s stuck well and truly in the 20th century and will not under any circumstances give up on the old bureaucratic ways of committee meetings and bits of paper Yes they have a lively forum but the committee will only follow the traditional well trodden methods of the previous centuries that of old AGMs and EGMs quorums votes and formal meetings.

So the key to all this to my mind is modern communications, networking, encouragement and enthusiasm. I don't think we need to have specific tasks and officers allocated to posts with entrenched duties, but I do know that we do need people who are happy to do things. People that like to help others and have some get up and go. the rest is relatively easy. Anyone at all who has managed to join this forum and make a posting on it in a discussion thread has the ability and skills to take part, they proved it by posting on the forum. So don't be afraid that you won't be able to do things all the club really needs is your participation.

The one thing that I don’t see from the club which I’d dearly love to see is this …. Where are people located? I’d love to be able to meet up with more people with Midas cars or in fact any kit or even just an interest in kits of any kind.

On a final note I think there's been some great suggestions and I think opening up this discussion thread is an excellent thing to do lets hear more from folks. :-)
User avatar
kelvink
 
Posts: 636
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2012 8:12 am
Location: Dorset

Re: Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

Postby cortezkeeper » Mon May 18, 2015 2:37 pm

Just a quick word about the committee and its valuable helpers. Whilst the Cttee members may have named duties, there just aren't enough of us (see the mag intro page) to have entrenched duties - we all muck in, as the saying goes. Someone however has to sign the cheques for the magazine, someone has to get tickets and info for Castle Combe, someone has to collate our gatherings and buy the barbecue goodies, someone has to pursue the membership subs. It is vital that members know who ! The time I spend as treasurer is modest - much, much less than I spend following Superbike over the year. Thus anyone helping the club will not be overburdened. Your help is vital - especially as we oldsters can't find the slot to wind up our computers without clear instructions. Now, where did I put my abacus ?
Michael.
cortezkeeper
 
Posts: 151
Joined: Sat Dec 06, 2008 4:35 pm

Re: Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

Postby kelvink » Mon May 18, 2015 2:39 pm

benofbrum wrote:Thanks Kelvin for that link. Well worth watching and thinking about in relation to our club. The membership divides in may different ways, hobby value, type of usage, age, expertise and specific skills.
It was apparent at the AGM that one such divide was between those with basic computer expertise, who google, shop and send emails and those to whom swapping between operating systems and customising programmes is no big deal. As a generalisation these two groups tend to be those retired and with more uncommitted time and those working with computers as the latter. The trick will be to make best use of the two.
Alistair wrote specifically about committee structure, but do we need a parallel discussion on where the cars are going in the next 30 years. Midas's have bodies which are aerodynamically and space efficient. Since they were not initially designed to follow a fashion, they have never become out of fashion and have a long term future as long as part supply and regulations permit. At some point, re-engineering of at least suspensions will have to be undertaken.
Is this forum now funded by the owners club? if not, should it be?



Glad you watched the video and good to hear you too think it is worth watching. :-)

With regards to an updated modern Midas, while I'd love to see this happen too I don't think it's essential at all as far as a club is concerned not least of all because a lot of the things we've been chatting about is reinforced by the success of 'Classic Cars' and their clubs. Just look at my weekend's outing with the Wessex Car Club (a modern car club) that took me along to one of the greatest Classic and Vintage car events that of the Beaulieu Autojumble I can't say more than that :D

As an aside here's some photos from that event if you want to see some of what was there. https://flic.kr/s/aHskbJPb5E
User avatar
kelvink
 
Posts: 636
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2012 8:12 am
Location: Dorset

Re: Midas Owners Club - The next 30 years

Postby kelvink » Mon May 18, 2015 2:43 pm

cortezkeeper wrote:Just a quick word about the committee and its valuable helpers. Whilst the Cttee members may have named duties, there just aren't enough of us (see the mag intro page) to have entrenched duties - we all muck in, as the saying goes. Someone however has to sign the cheques for the magazine, someone has to get tickets and info for Castle Combe, someone has to collate our gatherings and buy the barbecue goodies, someone has to pursue the membership subs. It is vital that members know who ! The time I spend as treasurer is modest - much, much less than I spend following Superbike over the year. Thus anyone helping the club will not be overburdened. Your help is vital - especially as we oldsters can't find the slot to wind up our computers without clear instructions. Now, where did I put my abacus ?
Michael.



I very nearly said "with one or two special exceptions such as the treasurer for example, who has a vital role as far as money is concerned within the club"
User avatar
kelvink
 
Posts: 636
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2012 8:12 am
Location: Dorset

Next

Return to Midas Owners Club News

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests

cron