Let me jump in here with my opinion. We've drifted pretty far from the
original subject which is: "should the National Office be more tilted
towards serving the current membership or future members?".
Obviously there has to be a bit of a balancing act here. This year has
shown that the club can't keep growing forever or eventually you reach
a point where it gets, as Yogi Berra used to say, "so crowded that no
one goes there anymore". On the other hand you can't avoid new member
recruitment and retention or the sport will begin to wilt.
I think today's problems are mostly the result of two factors, one the
current popularity of motorsports and two the "Gen-Y" baby-boomlet. I
don't think either situation will continue indefinitely, at some point
we'll stop attracting members at the current rate and things will
self-adjust. The question is in the mean time at what level do we try
to maintain the sport and if we do have to handle significantly higher
entrants how do we do it?
Currently this is really only an issue for ProSolo, I doubt that
Nationals will quite reach it's 1200 entrant cap this year, though if
the economy ever recovers then we may have an issue there as well. For
Pros IMHO the best solution would be to have more events (at least 3-4
more on the schedule) and raise the qualifying bar back to best 3/4 as
it was before 2000. I think this would remove most of the current entry
cap issues without alienating the current membership or new members.
As to whether SCCA should aggressively push the sport in the public eye
you have to balance the pluses (sponsorship for example, imagine real
cash payouts coming back to ProSolo!) and the minuses (events sold out
3 months ahead of time). I highly encourage that everyone with an
opinion on this not whine on this forum but rather send a letter to
Steve Johnson outlining their opinions and concerns. Unlike some
previous SCCA presidents who said "Solo what?" Steve is well aware of
the issues surrounding Solo and is more than willing to listen and take
to heart the membership's opinion.
Thank you for listening,
- Alan Dahl
--------------
Alan Dahl email:
alandahl@mac.com
Federal Way, WA, USA ICQ: 52688023
http://homepage.mac.com/alandahl
/// unsubscribe/change address requests to majordomo@autox.team.net or try
/// http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo
/// Partial archives at http://www.team.net/archive
|