2009-Questions answered

**Moose** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:52 am

afmotorsports wrote:
rrracing99 wrote:I would think if there was a large interest from members wanting to go to the board meetings, we'd see a good representation of members who live within an hour of San Leandro. If there were 20-30 members showing up regularly from the surrounding area, I'd be more inclined to think members from other areas would be interested in attending as well if there was a feasible way.

A very common and highly contagious symptom of becoming an AFM board member is the sudden belief that those elected to the board are smarter, care more than the rest of the club and were placed in that position because the rest of the membership trusts them to make the "right decisions". Please refer back to #1 requirement of becoming a board members: willingness to drive to San Leandro once a month. Board members do a job that most club members are unwilling/unable to do, in large part due to the pain-in-the-a$$ factor of driving to the meeting. How many times did Shawn or Kathy or Stanton or Berto or anyone else go to an AFM board meeting before being elected? Very, very few times if at all (and believe me, I didn't either unless there was a "hot topic", so I'm including myself in that group). So what happened, somebody flipped a switch and all of a sudden these people "cared" and were "interested" in the running of the club?? Doubt it. Most of them were good members of the club who cared and wanted to become involved, but the #1 road block is the huge inconvenience of the physical meeting in San Leandro.

It's a little hypocritical of AFM board members to declare that they would want "proof" of the membership's interest in the running of the club (20-30 members showing up) when clearly the vast majority of current board members didn't regularly attend the meetings prior to being elected. It's a vicious cycle and the only way I see that can break that cycle is to use technology (WebEx or something similar) to open up the meeting to the membership.

The minutes that the secretary takes are fine, but that's not a replacement for those members who want to participate and get involved. If members don't have a reasonable avenue to the meetings and the running of the club - and please don't say something ridiculous like drive to the meeting from Reno or Redding "if you really care" - then there is always suspicion, resentment and apathy.

I think someone once said "the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result" - the physical meeting for a club who's membership is spread out over hundreds of miles is an outdated process given the access to technology like WebEx. Make a change or else you will continue to see 8-10 board members making decisions with very little input from the membership.

Well said and a hearty "Amen"

BTW, one thing my other club does to draw more members to it's monthly meeting is to hold a raffle. You arrive, check in with your membership card and you are issued a single raffle ticket. You may buy additional tickets for $1/each. The extra ticket sales cover the cost of the items on raffle (or they are leftover prize goods from competition weekends). This process gives us an exact history of member attendance by date and member number and typically draws in excess of 50 members to the meetings in addition to club officers.

The clubhouse we have has a full operating bar and serves snack food too. It does a great business as a side effect of the good member attendance the raffle brings to the table AND not comping anything to anyone helps keep club expenses down.

If we had better attendance maybe we could try asking if Ricky's will give a percentage of biz brought in by AFM meeting back to the AFM as a way of covering the monthly food/bev expenses being presently incurred Wink

**Mike R** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:53 am

Have the meetings ever been changed around as far as where you all meet. Say 1 month in San Jose area, 1 month in S.f area, etc. I know it might help in some ways of getting people to show up from different areas. But still , if you had a pressing matter, you wouldnt want to wait until the meeting comes to visit your town.

Ive often wanted to come to a meeting to see how the club works and learn more about the club. But as mentined, the drive would suck and im not willing to do that since i get up very early for work. I applaud all the board memebrs who make the meetings and know its got to be tough work. You cant please 100% of the memebership 100% of the time. But I do think there needs to be ways to better communicate to the membership and get everyone involved more.

**PantyBuncher** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 11:09 am

it has been tried some. mostly i think it's not a great solution. what are the odds that the items you are interested in will be presented(and completed) on the day that the circus comes to your town ?

**675 Trip** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 1:49 pm

Having been to a lot of meetings and attended some just because something I was interested in was on the agenda, I can tell you that most items take multiple meetings to address, many issues don't get a second and therefore get very little, if any, discussion.

If you want anything to definitely be discussed at a meeting, you have to be sure to have at least 2 board members on board, one to bring the motion and one to second it so you can even have a discussion.

Also, audience (and board) input is by raising hands and being called on. sometimes, if the presiding officer thinks an issue has been discussed enough he will cut off discussion. It needs to be done.

I am hoping the Board responds favorably to my offer to record audio and audio/video of the next meeting so you can all see/hear what is going on. Looks like audio is about 20mb/hr audio/video is likely 1gb/hr. If approved, it will be a good little experiment.

**Moose** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 2:15 pm

675 Trip wrote:Having been to a lot of meetings and attended some just because something I was interested in was on the agenda, I can tell you that most items take multiple meetings to address, many issues don't get a second and therefore get very little, if any, discussion.

If you want anything to definitely be discussed at a meeting, you have to be sure to have at least 2 board members on board, one to bring the motion and one to second it so you can even have a discussion.

Also, audience (and board) input is by raising hands and being called on. sometimes, if the presiding officer thinks an issue has been discussed enough he will cut off discussion. It needs to be done.

I am hoping the Board responds favorably to my offer to record audio and audio/video of the next meeting so you can all see/hear what is going on. Looks like audio is about 20mb/hr audio/video is likely 1gb/hr. If approved, it will be a good little experiment.

Eric,

I can re-render the video for you to standard windows media at 200kbs or less and can also post on our server for download as we have plenty of bandwidth to handle the demand.

The render/conversion I do provides a filesize in the 200mb per hr range and provides 400x300 resolution at minimum which is a pretty standard webcast rez and allows viewing while it streams/downloads.

Hosting the audio for multi-user download/hinted streaming is also no problem.

**675 Trip** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 2:35 pm

That would be great. My camera stores it in .mov format. If all goes well, I can post it on my server for you to download with DTA or something. My outbound connections isn't great which makes torrent a real asset.

**Lokisdog** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 3:28 pm

Hey Shawn

First let me add another hearfelt thanks for stepping up to the communications plate, this is exactly what is needed from our leadership IMO.

My questions are pretty simple ones,

1) Maybe I missed it in all this thread but what are the arguments if any against having meetings on the Saturday evening of a race weekend?

Obviously the months with no race we meet in San Leandro, but seem to me if we really want a good turnout that's the best time to do it.

2) Has something like this been discussed/tried before:

Clear and detailed agendas presented well in advance on the website, along with information and data pertinent to each topic for review by the membership. I would think this should make the meeting go relatively smoothly, e.g. if anyone wants to present an agenda item (rule change, new class, etc) they need to have the supporting documents and data readily available before the meeting for all to see before it gets a slot on the agenda. Scotty or whomever can post it up to the AFM site for download, and maybe even a Pro's & Con's discussion thread started well in advance of the meeting so folks are informed and numerous minds can review not only the proposal but look for direct and indirect impacts, unintended consequences etc.

If this is done on the AFM site and restricted to licensed racers only, properly moderated, it should be a positive, productive way to run new ideas past the membership and for both the Board and the membership to get a good feel for the issue and even a general consensus built before the actual meeting, and thus involving the membership in a sort of 'pre-meeting' and mitigating the need for many to actually make the trip to San Leandro. Folks will know well in advance if they should try to make the meeting, or if they feel their opinion is already well represented.

There will be emergency items occasionally but that should be the execption and not the rule.

Comments?

Thanks

- Eric Arnold
#235

**675 Trip** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 3:48 pm

I can't agree enough about useful, timely agendas.

It used to be agendas got posted around a week before the meeting.

I think scotty was trying to be more accomodating by allowing members to add to the agenda until friday before.

That doesn't leave him much time to put it together.

It may be logistics that he is not going to get the agenda done until the weekend. If that is the case, I would like to see the agenda cutoff a week earlier so the general membership has a week to talk about it.

I would be more than happy to do something in my "communications" role to take the bare bones agenda that scotty uses for the minutes template and cut it down to the topics for members to discuss.

Those types of agendas combined with multiple members listening to or watching recorded prior meetings could provide a basis for a strong discussion and a chance for support for or against to be solidified.

**Fast Turtle** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:43 pm

afmotorsports wrote:
rrracing99 wrote:

I think someone once said "the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result" .

Umm, that would be Einstein.

I agree with Eric on the timely publication/notification of the agenda and pertinent documents. As much as allowing last minute additions etc as a way to be more accommodating it's actually is a disservice to the club and the BOD having them make snap decisions without the time to properly review and ask questions prior to the meeting. The Board should have a minimum of 5 days to review their COMPLETE packet, in order to adequately address any questions or concerns they may have with a particular item. As the sign in my engineers office states "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine"

**kneedrag** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 9:19 pm

Lokisdog wrote:
1) Maybe I missed it in all this thread but what are the arguments if any against having meetings on the Saturday evening of a race weekend?

Given the time it takes to get through a full agenda it's best to keep it seperate from the distractions of a race event. Typically we struggle to get through the full agenda in 4 hours. Having it at the track, especially after the practicing and wrenching all day would be quite the challenge. Not saying it couldn't be done but it does add a level of complexity. Having the BOD debating topics until 10pm would be exhausting.

Lokisdog wrote:2) Has something like this been discussed/tried before:

Clear and detailed agendas presented well in advance on the website, along with information and data pertinent to each topic for review by the membership.

Something like that did work fairly well in the past on the micapeak forum. It was restricted to just the membership and there were many healthy debates back in the day.

Something changed with popularity of message boards though and it turned into a free for all. I guess people just like to be part of "something" and like seeing themselves as some online persona. Post counts, avatars and personalizing their accounts warped good and simple communications IMO. I'll let the shrinks figure all that out.

Just getting the information out a head of time was a good conversation starter. Each Secretary has had their own style and timetable. Some have had more time then others and all do their best with the available time they have. I'll work with Scotty to see if we can be a bit more pro-active. Kevin was great with communictions but did have a lot free time on his hands. Laughing

**Lokisdog** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:50 am

kneedrag wrote:

Something like that did work fairly well in the past on the micapeak forum. It was restricted to just the membership and there were many healthy debates back in the day.

Something changed with popularity of message boards though and it turned into a free for all. I guess people just like to be part of "something" and like seeing themselves as some online persona. Post counts, avatars and personalizing their accounts warped good and simple communications IMO. I'll let the shrinks figure all that out.

Just getting the information out a head of time was a good conversation starter. Each Secretary has had their own style and timetable. Some have had more time then others and all do their best with the available time they have. I'll work with Scotty to see if we can be a bit more pro-active. Kevin was great with communictions but did have a lot free time on his hands.

I think this can work again, on the forum side, with member-only restrictions and having several good moderators policing the forum we can probably keep posts on track and productive. I'd be glad to try and help if I can.

As far as the agenda thing goes, I know that Scotty's profession places time demands on him that are not constant, my thoughts were targeted at actually moving some of that work upstream to the folks making agenda item suggestions.

IIRC there are some basic, standard agenda items that are always there, that's easy. Then we have the non-recurring stuff that shows up whenever someone wants something. If we place a burden on the suggestor to have all their info together and to Scotty say 7-10 days before the meeting, all Scotty should have to do is get it posted to the forum with hopefully minimal work/time demand on him. If the suggestor misses the deadline then the item waits for the next month's meeting. Holding to a strict submission deadline would be key.

I'm probably oversimplifying here but the gist of this is that if we let some part of the work move to the membership it can reduce the strain on the Board.

FWIW anyway.

- Eric Arnold
#235

**com3** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:04 pm

wait wait wait...after reading the first few posts...am i to understand that i have to purchase a million dollar liability policy that will cost me more than i will actually make from afm that names the AFM as a 2ndary insured so kids can race? Confused

**afmotorsports** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:23 pm

com3 wrote:wait wait wait...after reading the first few posts...am i to understand that i have to purchase a million dollar liability policy that will cost me more than i will actually make from afm that names the AFM as a 2ndary insured so kids can race?

Yep, that's pretty much it... nevermind that the fastest growing class in AFM is F40, not riders under 16. Rolling Eyes

I'm sure the AFM's new insurance agent cashed a nice commission check for our new policy and will be happy to take a check from you as well. There's a huge conflict of interest in that whole insurance fiasco, but that's getting quietly swept under the rug...

**holeshot** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:45 pm

Joe, Alex is leaving out an important part: Photographers were not a part of this requirement I believe.

**PantyBuncher** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 4:09 pm

hey shawn,

a) just reminding you....you were going to get us the year over year % increase in cost for insurance

b) is there some reason any insurance agent is involved anyway ? i mean, i think most K & K sells insurance directly to the purchaser, don't they ? is there some added benefit to having an agent at all ?

c) my understanding of the vendor situation at bw is that any vendor pays a fee to bw directly, so i don't see any requirement for a vendor to pay the afm at all ? for example, if i want to go sell kart tires or scones on an afm weekend at bw, there's no need to pay afm anything, right ? it's a straight up biz deal directly with bw, no ? my understanding is that the afm rents the track, and that bw still owns the pits....they just let us park there.

d) do you support any of the volunteers that have stepped up on this thread to distribute video of the meetings ? or, if you don't support them, do you have any reason to object ?

thx