Agm 2021

[fat nick]

Just heard back from pub …. Yes they are dog friendly See you all at AGM

[fossie]

We now are booked into the hotel , they got a cancellation.

[fat nick]

Yay. I will be there Sunday. Can’t make Saturday as have to look after my mum.

[sparki]

We now are booked into the hotel , they got a cancellation.

yay!

[KeKat]

JMac I have a room at the pub, which has spare beds, so you don't have to camp .

[katmarch]

On way, thought I’d break up the journey, halfway stop at Milton Keynes

When are peeps getting there tomorrow?

Steve

[fossie]

We ..probably 1630 ish...

[jmac]

JMac I have a room at the pub, which has spare beds, so you don't have to camp .

Top man. I'll see you there. The beers are on me.

[Uncle Bob]

Apologies, but I'm not going to be there as you can probably guess, too far and not really enough time. I'll answer some of Fossie's questions first below then some of my thoughts after.

1. Membership has obviously declined , or has it ? Many names you'd expect are no longer , why ?
This isn't the case. When Fossie handed over in 2019 there were around 63 members and now there are 77 or a 20% increase.

2 . Putting pictures on the website ...can we get it sorted I am not the only one.
This would be one for Sam, though I have Googled and it does seem an issue with phpBB for some. I get the same problem from time to time with the photos from my phone.

3 we are hosting the EuroKat , we have funds and probably enough but how could up the kitty ,
We need to pay for a DJ , a band or 2... Breakfasts for 100 people for 3 days..
Current balance of Paypal is £1800, not sure what is in the bank as that still isn't sorted. See below for membership fees - might need a balance for the coming years...

4. The Pride ...
Yes well see below...

5. The current chairman is obviously struggling because of the time taken up in the current circumstances.
I didn't really want to be chairman, it's a role that doesn't have many things to do but for me it was just one more thing on top of the others. No-one else volunteered last year which was a little disappointing. As one of the chairman tasks is to call the AGM then it could pass to whoever called it this year as they have show aptitude for the role!

6. Regalia ...we need to get beanie hats , hoodies , new t shirt design sorted and printed.
Talked about every AGM...

7. Part of our future existence is coupled to new blood and this means attraction the new katana owners ...how?
Can you get a new Katana on the Manchester show stand? I think having the new Katana owners would be good, but people who buy new bikes tend to have them short term before moving onto the next great thing so not in the club for the long term, those who have the older Kats tend to keep them (Sparki excepted of course )

================

We've all had a different experiences the last year and for me it's just been work and family (with a little bit of biking thrown in). I work for myself and the customers I have had all increased my workload from moving people to home working (and in some cases back again!), increasing staff and moving quicker to the new technologies (especially hosted services) which means I spend a good part of my time with training myself in these new technologies and keeping the bad guys out of the existing ones. Anyway a lot of time in front of a computer, which when I get some free time I don't always want to spend that in front of a computer again. I have also got into some smaller bikes again as well and with those there are more active members in the club (EACC) in Norfolk for runs this way.
At present the work situation isn't likely to change for me in the next 1 to 2.5 years but I am working on that and then I'll hopefully have a bit more time - what to do it that time though...

So to discuss from my point of view:
The Forum and FB Group:
I think the forum generally has a core of people that use it but as the world moves on, forums seem to be replaced with FB Groups in my view. ACS was like this early on, the EACC club I'm in, with generally older members is the same. I have now setup a FB group and 29 of the 77 members so far have joined. It would be nice if everyone used the same one so that it is busier and hence more active. Not sure that will happen though.
Regarding the FB Group do you think this should be limited to just Members (and possibly past members?) or others in the UK who would like to join (we can hassle them to join!)?
There is email to deal with which I have been doing and the forum was getting 100's of spam registrations which meant legit ones were getting lost. That seems to have been fixed by changing the sign up question(s).
Blix used to look after the forum does anyone else want to take on that task (which I am doing at the moment)? It doesn't tell me when someone is waiting to be activated - I just checked and there was someone waiting form Wednesday (it's Saturday now).

Membership and Membership Admin
I hate doing admin! I do my own admin for work (invoicing and time accounting) and even put that off as much as I can (in Oct I finally invoiced for hardware etc supplied as far back as July!). Does anyone else want to do it? If the answer is NO then I really only have 1 suggestion:
The yearly membership fee is currently £5 a year which equates to around £350 a year. Web hosting and insurance is about £200. We have £1800 in Paypal and pluus ??? in bank. I suggest maybe we have free membership for the next couple of years, it might help us attract some new people. That really is the only option. It is easier with membership once per year IMO but you do get people joining through the year to deal with. The point that seems to get raised by some is unless we do a personal handwritten letter to each renewal etc then there is no personal touch. I always do a email for a renewal / new member, so can't really see what the different is. Cost of postage being what it is, email allows us to keep the membership fee down.
If we go free the next couple of years then we probably need £800 to cover the costs - bare that in mind for AGM / EK expenses.

Finance
It would still be good for someone to get access to the bank and transfer whatever funds are in there to Paypal so we know our actual balance. Been asking for couple of years...

Pride
If the time I have to spend on the club is freed from the membership / forum then I can do the Pride. Lex has also volunteered. Again personally I don't see the need for the paper copy given the low membership fees. My thought was to offer free membership to those who submitted articles, but that relies on having a membership fee the next couple of years (see above). To a certain extent you can put a lot of effort into the Pride (the last 2 I did) in which only a handful of people will read - should we open that up and offer the Pride to the general Katana community? That would give incentive to do...

That's it for now...

UB

[fossie]

Cheers UB , this is what we needed a view point written down so we can discuss pro and cons ...
Valid and concise .