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>

[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.

[StirCrazy]

ok cool well if Darren needs a extra10 megs for pics and stuff he can let me know and I will give him some space.

Steve

[Reefmaster]

Hey guys. Sounds like the meeting this weekend was great, i'm disappointed i couldn't make it.

i'm at a bit of a deficit not having heard all that was discussed at the meeting, but i have some opinions on this topic [img]images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img] (troy, i can just imagine ya going "oh no, here it comes" [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] ).

1) i strongly support the idea of an organized club with an elected body. i can think of a lot of benefits of doing this, and the only negative is the time people would be putting in to it. but for me, its not like work, or home chores, its something i enjoy mucking about with so i would gladly contribute time to it (just bloody great says tanja [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] ).

2) i'm gonna state this up front. i, just like most or all of you using this BB, are very greatful to titus for having set it up and having paid for it this far. titus, you've achieved a pretty remarkable feat in pulling as many local hobbyists together as you have, and for being the catalyst to meetings, friendships and discussion of a club. i have never and in no way would undermine that.
however there has been substantial reference in the past to the costs of maintaining the BB. we do have a great BB here (for free at that), but this isn't free for titus, and really, why should he be paying for the continuation of this board if it effectively is used by club members. i'm not suggesting we should just start up another and jump ship. not at all. i don't know what the best way of handling it is. but my point is that if we have a group of people, and this group incurs expenses (such as maintaining this board), then it's my opinion that membership fees should be paying for these expenses until such time as other avenues are available - sponsorship, raffles, etc. and if membership fees are going to assist in paying for this board, then an agreement has to be made between the club and titus. thats my thought at least.

the rest sounds great. i think some of you would be amazed at the buying power we could develop! shane