What do you want out or a club?

[Troy F]

I might as well start this off. If everyone could just follow suit and give your interpretation of what you want out of a local reef club.

First and foremost, I'd like to see a membership fee and fundraising with the main intent of bringing in a prominent figure in the hobby, scientific field or industry to lecture. I see this as a very viable possibility. Ron Shimek, Rob Toonen, Eric Borneman, Charles Delbeek, Richard Harker, Dana Riddle, Jerel ? etc. would be considerable speakers.

Another reason to collect dues would be to operate the club at a slightly more advanced level. We could use posters and other such advertisements to increase our exposure to hobbyists outside the club.

I think we need an elected body to run the club. I'm not an expert in governing assemblies but I'd think we'd need a treasurer, chairperson, vice-president and president. I think the membership should vote on the positions and anyone intersted in a position should/could step forward in this post. Don't be shy [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] . I don't think the president and vice-president positions should both come from one side of the pond. I think both areas should have representation. The people in these positions would be responsible for organizing events according to the wishes of the club members. Most important in all of the above is that I will hold VETO power [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] .

Continued sharing of ideas, frags, war stories and etc.

The January meeting at Victor's showed how big a club we have. I can think of five people that weren't there and I'm sure you each can think of other people that didn't make it. The possibilities are very open to whatever we decide.

PS: I swear I didn't make a typo in the title , there must be something wrong with the BB.

[ 27 January 2002: Message edited by: Troy F ]</p>

[reefburnaby]

Hi,

There was some talk about hosting a seperate site for the club. This is possible and it would cost about $10 to $30 a month to host with unlimited bandwidth (same hoster as canreef). So, this is a possibility. This hoster will probably survive this downturn, but I am not sure. Otherwise, most large hosters are offering around $5 per GB of bandwidth. Dedicate Co-site server start at $200 per month and up. So, hosting is not as expensive as we first thought and it can be support by our membership fees. UBB is $200 and $100 per year for updates.

http://www.ehosting.ca/welcome2.html

Hosting future meetings are going to be a big problem. The January meeting was fairly sizeable and I think I could have had an addition 10 people (standing room only)...but that's it. We might need to find another method of meeting and a different way of looking at other member's tanks (like a tank tour). Burnaby public library offers free meeting space and I am sure other public libraries are offering the same (or for a nominal fee).

We could also have guest speakers from our local experts (like Jamie, Darren, Dale D and others) to give us talks about fraging, DIY tips, and etc. And, we can get some of the universities involved and ask some of the not-so-well-known experts to give some talks. Some of the bigger name experts will cost us a lot of money, but we may be able to bring one of them in if we have enough cash.

In my humble view, I think the club should serve serveral purposes :
a) Provide a time and place for new and old reefers to get together and trade information/frags/ideas/equipment. This can be done with meetings, auctions and tank tours.
b) Keep reefers up to date with latest trends and technology by presentations and seminars from experts (local or abroad).
c) Arrange group purchases and distribute them at the meeting.

So, our club costs would only need to support the meeting place and a possible full blown club website. That would amount to about $120 to $500 over the year. This money can be raised in a number of ways including membership fees, raffles for equipment, or even auctions.

Getting discounts from our retailers are going to be tricky. I think we can get better deals if we buy in volume as a group purchase.

We should also make our presence more aware through newsletters and postings, but those are just some of my thoughts. As long as we don't end up like MASNA, we should be fine.

Does anybody know about a reef club that existed in Vancouver a long time ago ?

- Victor.

[ 27 January 2002: Message edited by: reefburnaby ]</p>

[StirCrazy]

reefburnaby, a club website isn't a business, so why can some one with shaw cable host it? I think a cable account would be more than enuf bandwidth for a "club" web forum. unless there is something in mind for this website that I don't know about. as for forum software there are freeware versions out there and less expensive versions also, I can check into that.

It is all fine and dandy to want to run out and buy a lot of stuff but I think if a club is going to be formed that there will be a membership dues then all options should be explored and then voted on by the members.

If the club is formed I also think that it should be a regestered organization so that there is acountability, not saying I think who ever is tresurer is going to run off with the money but 10 years down the line who knows who willbe here.. also you can get a cheep bank account that would require multiple sig's on a check to with draw money, so lets say if a expense is voted in the cheque needed to pay for it would have to have the president's sig and the tresurer'sig. There are laws out there that goveren the operation of a organization, I sugest we find a copy of them and check them out, as who knows maby we would be entitled to some sort of start up grant from the goverment, at the least it would explain what we need to Prove we are a regesterd organization to places that we might be seaking "discounts" or "special aarangements" from.

Steve

[canadawest]

I agree with much of the sentiments expressed above. I would like to see the club also evolve into an organized entity with an executive. My focus is also geared towards regular club meetings, knowledge exchange, frag trading, group purchases and local LFS discounts and possible sponsorships.

I like the idea of local experienced reefers doing seminars at meetings on topics such as fraging, DIY, coral care and propigation, etc.

I think membership fees are necessary to allow us to do things like eventually host our own webspace and discussion area. I also believe we have a vast pool of experience, knowledge and resources to draw upon within the membership of the club to help with such things as the creation and continuing publication of a club newsletter, production of club posters, etc.

Lets all post our input and start this new venture the right way.

[reefburnaby]

Hi,

One of the reasons why we can't host on say...my connection (ADSL....should we start another "discussion" about which is better ?), is the amount of bandwidth we are pass through. There are only 150 members on the board, and there have been 80000 hits in 2 months. With 100K page per hit, that's 8GB of data. Imagine if there were 500 members, we are looking at 20 to 50 GB of upload bandwidth per month. That's a lot of bandwidth and it would make Shaw/Telus very suspicous. Rogue FTP/HTTP servers (like warez/mp3) are easy to hide in Shaw/Telus networks, but a big discussion group with 20 to 50 GB of data transfer is not.

- Victor.

[Troy F]

We have a place for discussion here, there is no reason to spend club money on that in my opinion. If starting another discussion board is what you suggest using club money for I'd decline membership. There are just too many places out there to justify that particular use of funds. IF you are against continuing using canreef as your place of discussion there is space available over on reefcentral. As for a club page, Darren has the right idea about using his site for a information page. JMO.

[kris]

ummm i might be able to host a site... i don't need to worrie about the bandwith, just have to get the ok to do it. also i think an organized registerd club is a great idea, and i'll do what ever i can to help getting it going

[reefburnaby]

Hi,

I was just stating that hosting is possible. In any case, where can we spend membership money ?

1) Get experts from abroad to do a seminar. Well..that's almost $1000 right ? Or get local speakers for free.

2) Web site....$100s. Or use canreef's for free.

3) Publish in newspaper or Buy&sell...10s Or we can put up a sign in the LFSes for free.

I guess what I am getting at is do we really need to collect fees in the beginning (assuming we are working at slave labour rates). We probably want to build up credability, membership and visibility before we start charging fees. With a larger membership, we can easily impose a $5 admission charge to see Dr. Shimek do a seminar. It would be rather difficult to do the same thing with a smaller membership.

- Victor.

[StirCrazy]

I don't think the club page should be a BB as we have a great one here, shouldent the club web page just be info about the club and its members, a comming events page, and any sponcer links and such? something like that would have the same amount of hits as a regular web page and I would be willing to host a club webpage. I have a empty e-mail address yet so the club could have its own e-mail address also. mind you some one a little more creative than myself should design it [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Steve

[reefburnaby]

Hi,

Yah, that't the current plan until we get in to problems.
I think Darren is doing that.

- Victor.