> Egads! If you can pull in 30 new members in your region alone than you
> should get a job at National!
We here in Detroit do indeed pull in large numbers of new drivers every year.
Part of it is the season-opening Driver's School held at and in partnership with
a local university.
Credit where credit is due - Mr. Mike Burke has been running this show (AFAIK)
since he was autocrossing chariots. (my part in this is almost too small to be
measured). It's a fantastic - and popular - program.
This school filled a mid-sized classroom to capacity; I don't have exact
numbers, but I'd say somewheres between 40-80 people.
I don't know how many of them we retained, and this year has been a little off
due to lots of rain events, but it has to be a fair amount.
[lots of good stuff snipped]
>> Those are not big numbers. I can get 10-15 cars out for STU, no problem.
> Can you get all (or most) of them to keep coming? That's the challenge.
The "I" in this case being me personally - I think so. There's a large pool of
Talon guys here I can dip into, and by publising events and general browbeating
I think I can get them to come out. I think the two reasons they really haven't
so far is 1) the lack of a good class (STU fixes this) and the region doing a...
insufficiant... job of publishing and promoting event schedules.
No critism of the job the local Region is doing is implied here! Part of life at
the Regional level is that if you see something that needs to be improved, you
volenteer to do it, 'cause the staff ain't paid and are grossly overworked and
can probably see the problem as well as you but just don't have the time. I've
been tossing around ideas for publishing & promoting event schedules as part of
my STU World Domination Plan, and once I have something that may actually work
I'll be approching the Region staff with it.
And once the Talon guys start coming out, then it's time to go looking for some
other sources of new STU drivers. They're all over the place!
> I think the bulk of the burden for retention is
> not for Denver, but for the local regions to work on.
It's a 2-stage thing:
- It's Denver's responsibility to build general awareness, and to create &
maintain classes that are attractive. The importance of National level classes
cannot be understated! You MUST have a ladder up which a competitor can climb.
Not all people care to climb that ladder, but those that do care care very
deeply indeed.
- It's the Region's responsibility to put on the best possible events they can,
to work to try and retain people (and to get the retained people out recruiting
and retaining too) and to, when necessary, make adjustments or additions to the
National rules to reflect local quirks - like our Street Tire classes.
> We have some very
> outspoken DSP and VW proponents (Iain and Kevin), and they have made a
> personal effort with a number of new comers.
This is key. I can name people who took a personal interest in my well being and
kept me going in that first formative year, by offering advice, introducing me
to people, and generally helping to acclimatise to this new group of foreigners
- most notably, Jim Crider, Dick Topping, and Mike Burke. It's people like these
that retain new members. And the funny thing is, it doesn't take much. All you
need is to keep an eye out for newbies, introduce yourself, introduce them to
the other members, and offer the occasional word of encouragement when you see
them struggling. Hardly rocket science. But yet it makes _such_ a difference!
DG
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