holeshot wrote:Shawn, what happens when an uninsured vendor attends an AFM event? What are the ramifications of such a possibility?

Just like any signed agreement, we'd be in breach of contract. If we don't satisfy the requirements then the policy wouldn't be in affect. If our insurance coverage is in jeopardy, we might not be protected. If our event insurance isn't in affect then we are in breach of our track contract and we'd need to halt the event.

Obviously we'd never want it to get far enough to have to shut down an event because our insurance was voided.

Thanks Shawn.

AC: I was one of the ones who feels that the board itself needs to meet face to face at least once a month. The dynamic when in a room face to face is entirely different than at distance.

Webex for the club is a good idea, don't misunderstand my support for it, however the cost comes at a poor time, IMO...not to mention we discussed concepts leading up to Webex that would test components to the webex concept. One thing that did come up in our discussion was how to not make a meeting that lasts some 3-4 hours now, last longer with more input. One of the end comments by Kevin, I believe...which was well stated was like a city government or county supervisors meeting, allowing the public to watch the meetings/ proceedings was a worthy idea, but should people wish to provide input, they should do so in person. That seemed to be a reasonable solution IMO, to begin with.

[quote="afmotorsports"]

Currently the #1 qualification for being an AFM board member is simply the willingness to drive to San Leandro one Wednesday evening every month. Don't believe me? Show up at AFM meetings for six months straight and I'll bet you get nominated for a board position.

IIRC, current board members have at least 5 years experience with the AFM and most have 10-15 years. This has been typical of past boards as well. There is a lot of experience and knowledge among the members. The willingness to drive to San Leandro once a month is a little farther down the list of qualifications than #1. You must also be elected after you are nominated.

Part of the commitment of being on the board is going to the monthly meetings. When we did the Webex test, I found it much easier to get distracted at home than in Ricky's conference room. People would type a couple of sentences in response to a question, but it wasn't very engaging. There is something to be said for face to face contact and being able to see people's expressions and reactions.

There is also the issue of guests. Frequently people attend the meetings to petition the board. (Some recent examples include - minors petitioning to race, women petitioning for Formula AFemme and business representatives presenting timing/scoring systems.) I don't believe the interactions and discussions with these people would have been as thorough using Webex. Something gets lost when you don't meet someone in person.

When people petition the board, typically a lot of thought and commitment has gone into the process. Another concern with Webex would be whether items were being brought up on the fly without thoroughly being thought out first.

Because the board meets only once a month, I believe it makes sense to continue to meet in person. Perhaps adding conference call capability to the general meeting would be something to consider. I would also like to suggest the meetings are moved to Sacramento.

Thanks,
Kathy Reilly
Rider Rep

PantyBuncher wrote:is it true that a webEx or other conferencing tool would provide a net savings to the club at the same time as providing access to a larger number of members ?

The only possible way to save money with WEBEX is to discontinue "in-person" meetings which I don't believe is a realistic option at this time. Why would I not want to skip the drive and the getting home at 1:00am once a month?

Between mileage reimbursement and dinner, the average is $475 per month. I believe the annual cost for WEBEX has been quoted around $5000 to $7000. It's a wash, at best, if we switched to 100% online. From discussions we've had the majority of the Board doesn't feel that it is in the best interest of the club to only meet in cyberspace. To date I have not seen quotes or proposals for any other form of conferencing.

PantyBuncher wrote:since we know that alex is for the webex, and we know that shawn is against it,

Just to be clear I'm not against the concept of better communications to the membership. I'm against spending that much additional money for a service that I believe is way too elaborate for the AFM needs. Think MotoGP bike for a clubman race. Sure it would work but is that level of sophistication and cost needed to accomplish our goal? I don’t believe so, but others may have a different view.

My personal experience comes from working at one of the largest telecommunication companies in the world where cost is no object. I participate on average 3 conference calls a day and yet we use WEBEX maybe once a year. It's not needed to perform day to day, much less month to month, business for even some multi-billion dollar corporations.

AFM #21
Shawn Reilly
AFM President

kneedrag wrote:

Just to be clear I'm not against the concept of better communications to the membership.

what you doing here is perfect, no need for better communications.
now require all board members and officials to do same here on this forums.
straight answer right to the point is all needed. you will see much less bs on barf.
staying silent like simple question I asked on tech thread is what made few pages here and on barf. all not necessary.

we currently have 4/11ths of the afm board participating.
other 7/11ths are MIA. i'm guessing those 7/11ths are representing the ambivalent portion of the membership.

i'm not in agreement with TWF regarding perfection achieved. responses to questions on the afm forum is a piece of the puzzle. another one is good meeting minutes. the total meeting minutes i see regarding webex are as follows:

[ B) Web Board Meetings?
Presentation by Alex

Comments: no motion. To be continued to a later date.
Motion:
Second:
Vote: Yea: Nay: ]


i think we can all agree that these notes are neither accurate nor informative ?


for the record, i am not so much for spending a bunch of money on a conferencing system, if we can't recoup nearly all of it on physical meeting savings. so, i'm for finding a cheaper alternative to provide the conferencing. on the other hand, if we had a web conferencing system, it just might have saved me $300 on transmitter costs. so, it is probably worth some amount of expenditure.

kneedrag wrote:

PantyBuncher wrote:since we know that alex is for the webex, and we know that shawn is against it,

Just to be clear I'm not against the concept of better communications to the membership. I'm against spending that much additional money for a service that I believe is way too elaborate for the AFM needs. Think MotoGP bike for a clubman race. Sure it would work but is that level of sophistication and cost needed to accomplish our goal? I don’t believe so, but others may have a different view.

AFM #21
Shawn Reilly
AFM President

Sean

First of all I would like to thank you for finally getting on here and doing this. These have been many questions that have come up since the BW meeting we all had.
As a non profit org supported by the racers we have to make sure they come first; no racers, no org. It seems that there is a whole lot of decision making that you as BOD members are making that may or may not sit well with the paying members, kind of like the tax payer’s money and AIG. Transparency should be a must and so far there hasn't been much of that. I may have missed it but I can't find any of the minutes where you even talked about the whole insurance thing.

Perhaps we can handle this different way. Rather than using WebEx or anything else like that, what if you recorded by video all of your meetings and then posted them up here. We could make a separate section in the forum just for the videos. At the recorded meetings you guys would bring up the topics and state both cases and all the facts you have and then put up some kind of poll where the members can actually vote of what happens to their club. You then could make your decision on what to do. Doing it this way the members could actually see if their wishes are being carried out or not and it would only cost you a video camera and about 5 minutes of download time.

Oh and by the way, the whole MotoGP in clubman thing:
Last year there was a guy who races a Ducati Desmosedici (almost MotoGP) in clubman. It may have been a whole lot of bike for a clubman race but at least he had the ability to decide to do it or not.

kneedrag wrote:Between mileage reimbursement and dinner, the average is $475 per month. I believe the annual cost for WEBEX has been quoted around $5000 to $7000. It's a wash, at best, if we switched to 100% online.

$475 x 12 = $5,700
WebEx annual cost = $3,780
Total savings = $1,920

You can't even run 12 conference calls per year for the cost of WebEx. Maybe it has additional features that we may not use initially, but it's still cheaper than a conference call each month.

The main benefit however was NOT just the two thousand dollars in savings. The benefit was transparency in the way the club is run, additional participation from the membership (both as board members and volunteers) and utilizing the countless skill sets our members have that remain a largely untapped resource.

ok, here's 5/11...

I'm also of the opinion that interaction within the board is better accomplished in person. This comes from experience in my non-racing life where I participate in web based meetings on a regular basis. The web based meetings are certainly useful for communicating with folks in different geographic locations, document sharing for data presentation, etc. But there is something lost without the personal interaction that makes it harder to be efficient and harder to resolve issues (at least in my line of work and for the kinds of projects I'm involved with).

On the other hand, I fully agree that it is unrealistic to think that every AFM member could easily attend a board meeting. As such, I'm open to having conference calling or other options where club members could remotely attend (where at least the board members are present). As Shawn mentioned, we only had a motion for web ex; although some good alternatives have been suggested, no formal proposals have yet been put forth.

One of Alex's suggestions for web ex was so that the board members might not have to meet in person every month. I'm of the opinion that for some issues, once a month meetings maybe too infrequent. So, one option could be to meet Alex half-way on this and continue the in-person meetings each month, but adopt a conference calling system that can be used for both members remotely attending board meetings and the board being able to interact remotely between the monthly meetings as needed.

As for the minutes (and with apologies to Scotty before I go any further), I agree that we could (and should) do a better job to make them more informative. Other AFM members in addition to Andy have voiced similar opinions.

Andy, are you a little happier now?

exclusive of any savings......

WebEx annual cost / number of members on roster:

$3,780 / 683 = $5.53


because $3780 isn't spare change for most of us, here's some other unrelated numbers to see the scale in perspective of other club expenditures:


546 racers * $300 transmitter = $163,800

or so TWF can understand it: 32760 packs of marlboro's.


( thanks 5/11 )

[quote="rrracing99"]

afmotorsports wrote:

Currently the #1 qualification for being an AFM board member is simply the willingness to drive to San Leandro one Wednesday evening every month. Don't believe me? Show up at AFM meetings for six months straight and I'll bet you get nominated for a board position.

IIRC, current board members have at least 5 years experience with the AFM and most have 10-15 years. This has been typical of past boards as well. There is a lot of experience and knowledge among the members. The willingness to drive to San Leandro once a month is a little farther down the list of qualifications than #1.

There are plenty of racers with more experience and knowledge who are not on the board. The point is simply that the "willingness to drive to San Leandro once a month" is the deal-breaker for most AFM members. People who aren't able to make the drive are not nominated or they decline the board nomination. Nobody is on the board or gets elected to the board unless they can meet the #1 qualification: drive to San Leandro once a month.

Want proof? Move the AFM meeting to Reno and you will probably see the entire board change to people living in that area. Then those new board members can pat themselves on the back about how much they care about the club and how nobody else really cares because they don't show up at their meeting in Reno. Different location, same bs...

The meetings do move quickly and comments, depending on who says them, can be fillabuster or of actual content. In Scotty's defense, he's the secretary, but he's not a court recorder. To catch all the pertinenet conversation, we should do a webcast/ audio recording for the records.

One thing to note for members: some subject won't be covered, or certain components of a topic not be covered in the general meeting and rather will be in the BOD meeting which does not have the minutes displayed. This is a closed session meeting for only the BOD.

Jonny wrote:I'm also of the opinion that interaction within the board is better accomplished in person. This comes from experience in my non-racing life where I participate in web based meetings on a regular basis. The web based meetings are certainly useful for communicating with folks in different geographic locations, document sharing for data presentation, etc. But there is something lost without the personal interaction that makes it harder to be efficient and harder to resolve issues (at least in my line of work and for the kinds of projects I'm involved with).

Point taken. It's a valid concern. WebEx offered a 3 month trial period to give it a try and see how it might work out for the club. Poll on AFM forum had 50 votes, 90% in favor of using WebEx at least occasionally - see http://www.afmracing.org/webforums/viewtopic.php?t=3954

Fact: on average, current AFM board meeting is AFM board plus 2-5 members. That is unacceptable for a non-profit, membership-driven racing organization. It only raises suspicion and dissatisfaction within the club. We should try SOMETHING, it can't get much worse.

Welcome to the party, Jon!

One other issue with Webex is the non-ability to control the confidential portion of the BOD meeting. Knowing who is in a room makes a pretty solid case for whom hears what. Webex leaves a decent size hole in that regard. I do believe an audio recording/ feed would be a good start.

afmotorsports wrote: $475 x 12 = $5,700
WebEx annual cost = $3,780
Total savings = $1,920

Alex - Per our discussions on 2/11 the $315 rate was only good for the three month "trial" period. You have calculated it for all 12 months. The rate was substantially higher after the first 3 months. The "on-line" contract expired but I believe it was closer to $600 per month after the first three.

AFM #21
Shawn Reilly
AFM President