Hello fellow SAOCA Members! A very belated Happy New Year from your new Board of Directors. The accomplishments of the 2016-17 Board are going to be very hard to top, but we are all committed to working hard on your behalf over the next two years.
SAOCA Secretary Bruce Davis (phyman) has posted the minutes of our first meeting; I wanted to use this opportunity to add a few of my thoughts to those minutes.
First and foremost, I want to thank you for the opportunity to serve as the Club’s president. I have always said that the SAOCA is the best thing that has happened to Alpine ownership during the 40 years since I bought my SV and I appreciate the chance to give back to the club that has given so much to me.
On a less positive note, I also want to draw everyone’s attention to the third agenda item in the minutes: Inappropriate forum behavior. Unfortunately, this is a common problem in today’s digital environment, our forum included. This is something I have heard from multiple members, both before my term started and since the beginning of the year. Every recent Board has struggled with this issue and the 2018-19 Board will undoubtedly be challenged here, too. But, unlike previous Boards we have the benefit of more sophisticated forum software and we will use it to keep things helpful, respectful, and friendly. But, more than anything else, we’d like not to have to resort to such actions. All of us are joined by a love for a little-known, largely forgotten, English car. Let’s please all try to remember that and not stoop to public sniping or name-calling.
OK, off my soapbox. The Club has changed a great deal since it was founded and, while those changes are mostly for the better, there is one thing I would love to find a way to get back to: more face-to-face interaction. Take a look at one of the old Alpine Marques on our home page (http://sunbeamalpine.org/alpine-marque/ ) and you will see how much more active a club we used to be. There were many local chapters that got together regularly. My first Invasion was Invasion III in Dillard Georgia. Someone may have an accurate count, but as far as I remember, we had at least 30-40 members there! From that point on, Invasions were one of the high points of my year and something I really looked forward to.
Today, I have heard multiple people say “the forum is the Club” and I mostly agree with that. And, while the forum is certainly our lifeblood - and has saved me on many occasions over the last 16 years! - I would love to see us find a way to get back at least some of what we once had. That is one of the main reasons I have offered to create a new SAOCA survey, something I first did in 2006. The focus of the first survey was on primarily learning more about the members: who we were, what we owned and what we wanted from the club. I’ll probably repeat some of the key demographic questions this time around, but I really want to focus on the last point: what do you want from the Club? Maybe most of you will tell me that the forum is all you want. If so, great! We’ll put our efforts there. But, if there is more, if there is any thing the Board can do to strengthen this Club, we want to know about it.
Thanks to the great work of the previous Board, we now have technology that will serve us well into the future. This Board will do all we can to continue to make sure the Club continues to grow and stay the best thing that every happened to Alpine ownership!
Cheers,
Jim Stone
SAOCA Secretary Bruce Davis (phyman) has posted the minutes of our first meeting; I wanted to use this opportunity to add a few of my thoughts to those minutes.
First and foremost, I want to thank you for the opportunity to serve as the Club’s president. I have always said that the SAOCA is the best thing that has happened to Alpine ownership during the 40 years since I bought my SV and I appreciate the chance to give back to the club that has given so much to me.
On a less positive note, I also want to draw everyone’s attention to the third agenda item in the minutes: Inappropriate forum behavior. Unfortunately, this is a common problem in today’s digital environment, our forum included. This is something I have heard from multiple members, both before my term started and since the beginning of the year. Every recent Board has struggled with this issue and the 2018-19 Board will undoubtedly be challenged here, too. But, unlike previous Boards we have the benefit of more sophisticated forum software and we will use it to keep things helpful, respectful, and friendly. But, more than anything else, we’d like not to have to resort to such actions. All of us are joined by a love for a little-known, largely forgotten, English car. Let’s please all try to remember that and not stoop to public sniping or name-calling.
OK, off my soapbox. The Club has changed a great deal since it was founded and, while those changes are mostly for the better, there is one thing I would love to find a way to get back to: more face-to-face interaction. Take a look at one of the old Alpine Marques on our home page (http://sunbeamalpine.org/alpine-marque/ ) and you will see how much more active a club we used to be. There were many local chapters that got together regularly. My first Invasion was Invasion III in Dillard Georgia. Someone may have an accurate count, but as far as I remember, we had at least 30-40 members there! From that point on, Invasions were one of the high points of my year and something I really looked forward to.
Today, I have heard multiple people say “the forum is the Club” and I mostly agree with that. And, while the forum is certainly our lifeblood - and has saved me on many occasions over the last 16 years! - I would love to see us find a way to get back at least some of what we once had. That is one of the main reasons I have offered to create a new SAOCA survey, something I first did in 2006. The focus of the first survey was on primarily learning more about the members: who we were, what we owned and what we wanted from the club. I’ll probably repeat some of the key demographic questions this time around, but I really want to focus on the last point: what do you want from the Club? Maybe most of you will tell me that the forum is all you want. If so, great! We’ll put our efforts there. But, if there is more, if there is any thing the Board can do to strengthen this Club, we want to know about it.
Thanks to the great work of the previous Board, we now have technology that will serve us well into the future. This Board will do all we can to continue to make sure the Club continues to grow and stay the best thing that every happened to Alpine ownership!
Cheers,
Jim Stone