Upcoming Elections

Its obvious this club can do without a Chairman as King of the Castle... But it can do with a new Scottish Regional Organiser please.

Any thoughts on the Elections folks??

Hi Charlie

Just starting to organise them now that the holiday season is over. I expect to put a formal announcement on the forum next week asking for candidates, with a list of those who want to re-stand. Obviously regional organisers are the key people to keep the club active and hopefully members will put their name forward where there is a vacancy or they feel the need for a change in the region.

Regards

Steve Sharpe
Secretary
X1/9 Owners Club

I've been a member of a few car clubs before and considering the amount of secretaries and officers we have its not a particularly good one.

There are quite a few members and threads on here about poor show turnouts, misinformed members etc. Who is responsible for all that?

Why are we looking for a regalia officer? Couldnt one of our parts specialists take this role on? As they already have experience in card and cash handling, mail order and stock control?

I joined for technical advice and back up during my cars rebuild but the technical sections of the website and magazine are not very good. I'd love to be part way through rebuilding a hot fast road engine with piles of new parts but where can I ask for advice on welding up the windscreen surround on my car?
Since starting my project I have received the most help on Xwebforums.org without having to pay £31 for the privelige. This website has very few technical experts.

The website is great considering it appears to be the work and responsibility of one guy! Cant some of our army of officers and secretaries become technical moderators? Membership moderators? Just give the guy a hand, get more members on here. This website could be a valuable tool, a mine of great technical features and fast advice, a source of inspiration, a place to show off. Like most other car club forums, but it isnt!

Discounts etc.? We do get a small discount with the advertisers in the magazine, when they bother to respond but where do we recommend for tyres? Do we have a promo code for black circles? Who is our recommended source for windscreens? Is there a prefered breakdown cover company? Who deals with all this in every other car club?

Usually I wouldnt bother posting a rant like this but the people I have actually spoken to from the club are decent, helpful, enthusiastic people and they deserve a better club. At £31 (nearly double what the other clubs I am a member of charge) I would expect far more.

Please, if you are standing to be elected in this top heavy, expensive owners club please take notice of this message and change it for the better.

Thank you for the honest response and it will be taken on board. Quite simply the fee funds the cost of printing the magazine, with only a little left for the national event. In most of your questions, I could have published the answer for you so if you do need assistance, just put it up on the forum. Sadly it is only a minority of people that put all the effort in for everybody else. I have asked on countless occasions for people to stand forward and assist with roles and articles etc but few do. I'm hoping this will change in time for the AGM in October.

All of the roles are open to club members in accordance with the constitution and this will shortly be placed on the front page of the web site. For those that would like to put some input into the club please stand forward. The club is only what we all make it.

Rob,
Since the club has opened it's doors there has been an ~65% increase in forum registration. Do you know how many of the new 176 registrations are fully paid members?

It's a very small proportion of new registrations that become paid up members. I go through a special process in setting them up, to make sure they get the extended website access rights for which members are eligible, and I only do a handful a month.

Much depends on what people want to get out of the Club. As Rob says, the bulk of the membership fee goes on the mag. A lot of people love the mag and it's one of the key reasons why they join the Club, but I suspect many people get what they're looking for from the website and forum alone, without needing to pay.

I'm keen to explore the option of Web only membership for UK residents, but I think we need to make sure that that option offers good value for money too - is the extra stuff you get as a member worth paying the £15 for compared to free website registration? Is the proposition attractive enough?

At the end of the day, I think we need to perhaps offer more flexibility in the services we offer and the prices people pay, while ensuring we have a sustainable club that can support a quality printed mag for those who enjoy this feature. That's the dilemma!

What do people think? Any ideas? It's a good time to be thinking about this as we have the opportunity to change the constitution at the AGM.

If I had a choice, having seen what I have of the club, I would have opted for the web only option.
That said, you dont really get much extra content when you join.

If there was a web only option I think it would work better if you got more when you join. A couple of extra sections and access to the magazine I've already read doesnt really justify it. I have mentioned to Neil before about a 'members cars section' and a 'common X1/9 problems' page etc. and I'm sure, given the chance we will have more content and sections. I'd be happy to contribute, I'm sure many others would too?

What about opening up the website to everyone but hiding the pics or the ability to post to paid up members? Loads of car forums are like that.

Could the membership secretary not free Neil up by sorting out log ins and board access?

If we are going to have a magazine why can't someone (an advertising and publicity officer for example?) sell advertising to help with the publishing cost? If most of the membership fee is spent on publishing the magazine, selling more advertising cuts our membership cost? Or frees up funds for other projects? Or pays for discounts for members?
Could it be printed on cheaper paper? Could the colour pics be rearranged, rather than a small colour pic on each page, arrange it so half can be printed black and white on cheap paper and the other half in glossy colour? In the current edition there is half a page of officers and advisors, half a page of new members, notes from the editor and a whats on page. None of them need to be in colour, do they? Why do we need to see 2 full colour pages of wrecked X1/9s? I can look out my window and see a sorry looking X1/9 for free!

If you look at things in reverse, charge a lower amount to join and offer a subscription to the magazine. Does anyone like the magazine enough to pay for that? If say £20 of our £31 membership fee goes towards having the magazine printed thats £5 an issue!

There are a lot of pointless roles present yet useful roles missing. Who is responsible for liason with the DVLA/VOSA/motoring law queries? Why dont we have a proper technical officer? Who is pushing for discounts for members? Does anyone keep a register of cars, registrations and specs? (That would be an interesting page on the website, Neil!) Why do we need a seperate treasurer? Cant the chairman do it? In most car clubs the publicity guy, chairman, treasurer and magazine editor are the same guy! Do we need a secretary? Is this being run as a limited company or a non profit making club for people who share a common interest? Do we need an AGM? Cant this stuff be sorted out now? On the website and thru the magazine?

It just seems to me this club needs to change in a major way. We need to get rid of the overblown, top heavy and un-necessary management structure, we need to give people value for money or charge less, we need to entice people onto the website and to add to the magazine.

How about a shop that sells rare parts for X1/9s instead of keyrings and mugs? Set the format for the pages and get all of the sponsors (sellers) to add the parts they can offer, with / without discount to members save them money by undercutting ebay & paypal fees.

Add in some group buy opportunities for unavailable parts.

There is plenty more the club could do if it had some vision and direction.

Great idea!

The 'superb regalia' shop is horrific!

Yet most of the parts I have bought on ebay have been from members on here.

There's some really good points here. Regarding the point around how we differentiate the free web experience from the paid for one, it's a difficult balance. We could make the forum read only for non-members. However, one of the reasons we opened it up was to make it a bit more lively and making it open to members only would be a step back from this. We get loads of really good contributions from non-members and it would be a shame if we missed out on this. The restrictions on photo uploading is an interesting idea though.

However, I am looking at ways to differentiate the service that paid up members get. In fact, re your point around the "members car section" - it's actually been there for a couple of weeks, but I haven't had chance to tell people about it. I'll put a notice up tonight. If you look under the "our members" menu, you can now create and maintain a personal page where you can put details of your car, restorations etc and post pictures. People can then leave comments. I've also written a help guide which I'll improve over time. Anybody can view these pages but only paid-up members can create them.

Regarding the mag, I can't remember the details but I know we've looked at all kinds of options for reducing the cost. As far as I can tell, we've nailed the best balance between cost and quality. I think some of the ideas you've mentioned have been investigated and the cost savings aren't as great as you would expect. However, I think we've only really discussed this in terms of reducing costs and maintaining the current membership fee. If we set ourselves a target of lowering the membership fee and reducing the cost AND quality of the mag, we might come up with a different answer as we could be more aggressive in reducing the quality. When we did the survey last year though, I think the responses generally indicated that people would prefer to keep the fee at the current level and maintain a high quality magazine.

I'd love to get more technical articles on the website. With the new content management system we're using, it's really easy for me to upload articles that people have contributed. I initially started taking articles out of the mag and onto the main website, but I haven't had chance to do much of this recently. However, we can only publish what we get and I know Rob has terrible troubles getting content for the mag. Anyway, if anyone does have any articles of any sort, be they technical or otherwise, email them over to me and I'll publish them on the site.

Regarding Club roles, they have been there since the Club begin and are defined in the constitution, which of course we have an opportunity to update at the AGM. My personal view is that it's not about the number of roles but the number of volunteers - we can assign multiple roles to an individual for some of the less time consuming roles, after all. We tend to get a limited number of volunteers and we tend to agree on roles that suit the time they have available and what they feel comfortable doing. So I focus on the website, but I'd be pretty hopeless as a Technical Officer, knowing nowt about cars. I think we've lacked someone in recent years who can really focus on the advertising and publicity and building those relations with the trade. It could be made into a really big role, but it needs to be someone who is comfortable ringing round, hassling people, negotiating etc and getting out there. We're not all comfortable doing that sort of stuff.

As for Regalia, we have the capability to turn it into something good. I put tens of hours into developing the online capability, but I agree that the stock could do with a refresh. However, Tiff has been caretaking the role for well over a year so as not to let the Club down, depsite standing down. Again, if we had a volunteer, they could be out there talking to suppliers, getting new deals etc. I'm not sure where we stand on parts, by the way. I think there may be some liability insurance issues that mean we can't get involved with selling them as things stand, but others have a better understanding of this than me.

That was all a bit of a waffle, but I think I'd make two final points:
1) Echoing Rob's point, we need people to come forward and put themselves up for roles. The more new blood we get on the committee, the more we can change and improve things. Those Regalia and trade / publicity / advertising roles could really benefit the Club and its members if we could get someone in place with the drive to make things happen.
2) The AGM is a great opportunity to shape the destiny of the Club. If you have any proposals you would like to be discussed, please forward them to the Chairman and Secretary. And even better, come along to the AGM yourself and put forward your ideas (although we probably won't let you out again until we've got you on the Committee!)

I completely agree with you Ian which is why I'm glad this debate is out in the open. Please remember though, the £31 fee is paid by everyone involved in the club. The few that do participate for the good of everyone else are pure enthusiasts, devoted to the car and its following, they are not paid by the membership fee, nor are they exempt from paying it. They are simply volunteers.. It is now time for some fresh ideas and some fresh blood. The list of those standing for positions will be on the front page shortly so I urge you to come forward, get your name down and shape the club how you want it. If a position has two or more members running for it, a voting slip will be placed in the next mag. Email the secretary if you wish to improve things!

In response to the 'Rust in Peace' section in the mag, the idea obviously comes from Practical Classics magazine . I always find images like that Intriguing, perhaps it's because I started off with one when I was a kid . The feature was carried on from the previous editor and the feedback I've had so far with this exception, has been positive. It shows just how badly x 19s can go, where they rust and hopefully encourages members to rust proof their cars. I would gladly drop the feature in favour of technical articles -it actually takes an unbelievable amount of obtaining those images, but technical articles are few and far between. Maybe printing past material might be an option.

On the subject of technical, I think it would be good to have Nick Troth on board as an advisor (should he agree to), as he knows more than most about x19s. Obviously his business is the controversial issue, but Oliver's business is also fiat linked.

Thanks guys.

Although I may have come across as negative I posted my comments because it is heartbreaking that the club isnt better. I had my rant because I want things to change rather than for the sake of it! I 100% understand what you say about the lack of contributions from members.

Now I know its there I'll be contributing to the 'our cars sections'. Any part of which I'll be happy to have used in the magazine (I'd secretly be flattered if anyone though any part of what I write is good enough!)

I am no X1/9 expert but I am an experienced car mechanic/MOT tester and I'll be happy to assist anyone on these matters. I'll get to work on some contributions.

As far as the members shop goes, I think 1.8TS's idea was to have the club appear as a host for the parts rather than to stock or deal with distributing anything. Ebay for example, act as a host. They are not responsible or liable for any adverts posted or goods sold. If it was made clear the 'club shop' was a venue where specialists and members were allowed to sell their own items rather than a shop operated by the club I think it could be a great success. After all, if you are selling something for an X1/9 where better to advertise it than the owners club?

If it could be made to work I think it would attract more traffic onto the website, it would allow specialists to list more items or go into more detail for each item. It would draw non members onto the site.

As for the AGM, I am afraid I cannot justify attending. While I feel strongly enough to voice it on here I cannot justify travelling to wherever the AGM is likely to be. I am not prepared to email the secretary to ask to improve things as I cannot see the need for a secretary in the first place. By working in this way the club is the creation of people attending the AGM rather than the membership as a whole? As a paid up member the committee should work for me. As I understand it, the committee was conceived by and is voted for by members to act in members best interest. They should give me the opportunity to vote and express my ideas without having to attend the AGM or email the secretary.

If the committee want to improve things the first step is to listen to regular members. I've yet to find comments supporting the work of the chairman/advertising and publicity officer yet as far as I know they have not stood down. I'd be as well standing as chairman given the work they appear to do!

I'll contribute and assist wherever I can. Should I manage to cobble my own pile of FIAT together I'll attend shows but, like many I have spoken to and have voiced themselves recently if things don't improve we will go elsewhere.

www.x1-9ownersclub.org.uk/club/about.html

How do you think Kevin could be encouraged to join?

Sorry, not sure if my post was clear. Email the Secretary if you wish to take over a role and get stuck in as Steve is taking down all the possible forthcoming candidates. I'm glad this thread was started because all of these issues can be discussed on here and be put forward at the AGM. It appears that this thread is now the place to discuss your opinions.