November’s meeting brought out four members and settled some decisions on our web site that have already been implemented. We passed around prints of all the digital pictures that were taken at the last two meetings. Included in these prints were snaps that Ray Davis took at our first meeting. In Ray’s pictures was a great table picture that is now part of the BA-MARC web sites group photo collection. Individual member pictures are now up on our web site and we have begun linking individual member pages to their own home page. Over the next few months we
start putting articles up on the site and begin to expand the type of links we have begun to collect.
Event support came up early and we talked about making contact with Thomas R. Hall. Mr. Hall is the western region director of northern California for the Tour de Cure organization and is asking for support for their Redwood City and Napa California charity events. Right after this discussion we jumped into our Tour de Peninsula agenda topic.
Dan Curry will bring us more information about this event at our January meeting. Speaking of Dan, he is now walking on crutches after taking a fall while crossing a wet street in Boston. Dan says he should be off the crutches in a couple of months.
Event support is one of our major goals, but so is doing some riding together. Our small group decided we would create a few planned rides for this next year and see where that takes us. I’m going to take the lead on this and will add it as a discussion item for our monthly agendas. As for support, everyone at the meeting
agreed to help out at one of the Tour de Cure rides. They are usually both on the same day so we will need to decide which event we can serve best. In addition, Mr. Hall will get back to us in the next couple of months and let us know where they most need our support.
Supporting events takes help. Currently we are only a small team with limited experience. Hopefully, we will be able to attract other members so our support will be more effective. Talking about this at the meeting brought us into the discussion of finding members. We have a few plans, but talking about them here will help us clarify where we are going.
Here is what our member recruiting campaign looks like:
· Create a professional looking poster we can distribute to local motorcycle stores, shops and hangouts. This poster will also be placed in ham radio stores as well. David Sawyer is doing the detail work, layout and printing for our posters and will have something to show us at the December meeting.
· Our second focus has been to develop our own web site that is linked to the main MARC site. Having our own chapter site allows us create a local web-presence without dumping all the work on MARC’s primary
Webmaster, Drew Pushie – who, by the way, is doing a great job of remodeling the MARC web site.
· Registered a domain name so that if we move our site later, our location won’t get lost in outdated bookmarks making it harder for people to find us. To visit our local site, enter this URL into your browser: https://ba-marc.org.
We are just in the early stages of getting member information up on out site, but if you bookmark it you’ll find us easier the next time. We would also appreciate any insights or ideas so if you have any, send them to me at mailto:[email protected]
· Operate a local mailing list so that we have a casual means of talking amongst ourselves without bothering the main MARC list with irrelevant topics.
Not part of our current focus is how we connect with the local motorcycle groups in the area. Ideally, the GWRRA and GWTA groups who already support some of these events using their CB radios would be a great place to start. We’ll need to add this item to our agenda and work on this approach.
After our meeting, David Sawyer and I showed J.P. Rouland where the motorcycle accessory store, Road Riders, is located in San Jose. David and I spend far too much time and money at this place and went in committed to keeping the spending down. J.P. bought a great looking riding suit that will serve he well for many years and David and I emerged without any loss of wealth.
That’s it for November.
Roger…
WB1CFQ
