Okay Now that christmas is outta the way

[Richard_Dicosimo]

that last post confused me... people in the states pay a fee to be a member of a reef meeting group? what do you get out of the membership, like free coral raffels at the meet?

Richard

[Delphinus]

You can have an aquarium society up here too where you can pay fees. In fact Calgary has one, the Calgary Aquarium Society, but my understanding is they are primarily a FW and FO focus. We tried to set up a reef one a few years ago but we didn't have the #'s to make it viable. It's something I want to revisit in the future though.

The reason you pay is that if you are going to bring in guest speakers, you have to find a way to fund their travel expenses. So you need to have a treasury, an executive and so on.

[Richard_Dicosimo]

that sounds interesting but i think i would have to hear alot more about something like this before i jumped on board. And then again i suppose it all depends on how much a membership fee would be.
I think what i would enjoy more then a guest speaker is seeing other peoples tanks in person. I dont know about you guys but for me the most exciting aspect of this hoby is the diversity of creatures, i love seeing the less then typical fish in peoples tanks, clown fish dont do it for me anymore.

i think we should have a tank tour in Calgary, it doesnt have to be a burden if we arrainged for say 30 minute stops at each tank. then its not like you have the inconvienece of 30 people hanging out in your house all night.

Richard

[Delphinus]

I agree and many other people did too which is why it was left this way for now. Unfortunately it means the onus is on individuals to volunteer their places and so on which means we're probably meeting less often.

It's more for if you wanted to bring somebody like Calfo or Borneman in to do some presentation or whatever. Thing is, for something like that, it would be better to consolidate efforts between Calgary and Edmonton so it would involve a level of organization that would be something of a step up from what we've got right now. Plus who knows how often you can do something like that without it being too repetitive. Ie. probably only once a year, and for the other meets it could just be things like frag meets or tank tours. And theoretically we do those now without having to pay a membership fee, so I'm not sure if there's a lot of support for formalizing an actual group just yet. Heck Vancouver doesn't even have it yet! Although it seems they are on the cusp of forming something, I'm not sure.

The one advatange though of a formal society is that there would be an executive council to make things like meetings and so on a regular happenstance, rather than relying on individuals to take it upon themselves to offer up their place. So it could end up that we'd have more frags meets and so on. Which may be a good thing. So we might want to keep this idea in our backpocket, i.e. don't bury it too far just yet.

[BMW Rider]

One possibility that having a society with a treasury is that a meeting place could be booked for frag meets as opposed to relying on someone to host in their home. It is a big thing to take on for a person given the potential numbers of people that could attend. The last couple I went to were very well hosted, I'm not sure I can measure up to those standards. Certainly summer time would be better given the potential to utilize the yard for a BBQ.

A tank tour would be less demanding on any one particular person. To minimize the vehicle traffic, carpooling could be co-ordinated among some participants. Perhaps even have a limited number of participants (20-25 ??)to manage the human traffic. If a person is offering up their tank for viewing, they are automatically in, then any remaining spots would be up for grabs.