Sorry guys if I sounded short in my last e-mail. I have a tendancy to get right to the point and don't put any fluff in it.
The point I was trying to make was that I think dues will drive people away and the club doesn't need to be changed because it is functioning very effectively.
I feel that Dan did an excellent job in setting up the Silver Springs event. I know it's a lot of work because I've set them up many times myself, once for this club and many times for other clubs. Dan, I really appreciate the work you did as I'm sure everyone else did, even those that couldn't attend.
I still beleive that having the club event in South/Central Florida made it very difficult for members in N/S Carolina, N Alabama and Louisiana to attend unless they took vacation. Most of these people would have had to travel two days each way to attend this event. Also, the event wasn't held on a national holiday weekend this year (3-day weekend) which many people use to save their vacation time. Dan, as you said, I would have attended this year if I didn't have to go to the Yuma Proving Grounds to work -- it didn't rain there either
. Ocala is about an 8-hour drive for me from NW Florida and about the same distance anywhere in our club's area so the location isn't as improtant to me as it is to some of our other members. I was just trying to express what I've overheard people saying. Just trying to lay everything I've heard out on the table for an open discussion.
Gatorac, I agree with you that the location is not the only reason that some of the 168 Florida members and another 150 out-of-state members didn't show up. However, I also don't think we (the club organizers) should take that as an insult or consider it a failure or be concerned about it. In the large organizations I've been associated with in my many years, we considered ourselves very fortunate to get 20 percent turnout to any particular event like a Christmas party, retirement ceremony, etc. In a smaller organization, turnout is usually above 50 percent. I think the best way to look at these events (races, shows, meetings) is that we give people opportunities to attend and we should be proud of ourselves for giving them the opportunity. I also think it's wrong to expect everyone to attend just because we put a lot of effort into setting it up. To put this in other words, be kind to yourself, don't beat yourself up or others up over non-attendance, lets just have fun and be carefree.
I think the area club organizers in each state and the DSCC officers are doing an excellent job in giving our club members lots of opportunities to join into the fun and we shouldn't change because of low attendance at a few events -- let's just keep plugging away doing the great job that we're currently doing.