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.