Does anybody have any ideas about what to do??
I think Merrily has it backwards as far as the D.S. The D.S. should be demanding more from the fleets, the event chairs, and the regatta participants. Any or all of them should be submitting writeups before and after each regatta. Both Newport, RI and Cedar Point "require" that the winner of the day of each frostbite day write up their thoughts, tips and tricks.. And the winners do it with nary a complaint.
As a participant I feel if I want to keep the game going/growing, it starts with me! That is major factor in my posting on TLF.
If people don't want to give a rats hiney they reap what they sow, unless they are lucky enough to have that one dedicated person who picks up the slack for the them.
For a while.
Until they get sick of no one else contributing and they flame out.
Just seems a bit silly to put the load on a single person.
</rambling over, back to work>
Sorry for the rambling thoughts, but I'm in the middle of a few projects with a little time to kill.
Do we still think the newsletter is even nec ? With a good website geared towards content management, I would gladly give up my bathroom reading. (Surely there must be other classes in North America that have made this move)
Some of the districts maintain web sites and update them with regatta reports and district events - I know that some just copy and paste from their sites as the submission for the newsletter, so again the newsletter contains nothing new in that regard..
I think Merrily has it backwards as far as the D.S. The D.S. should be demanding more from the fleets, the event chairs, and the regatta participants. Any or all of them should be submitting writeups before and after each regatta. Both Newport, RI and Cedar Point "require" that the winner of the day of each frostbite day write up their thoughts, tips and tricks.. And the winners do it with nary a complaint.
As a participant I feel if I want to keep the game going/growing, it starts with me! That is major factor in my posting on TLF.
If people don't want to give a rats hiney they reap what they sow, unless they are lucky enough to have that one dedicated person who picks up the slack for the them.
For a while.
Until they get sick of no one else contributing and they flame out.
Just seems a bit silly to put the load on a single person.
</rambling over, back to work>
Sorry for the rambling thoughts, but I'm in the middle of a few projects with a little time to kill.
Some of the districts maintain web sites and update them with regatta reports and district events - I know that some just copy and paste from their sites as the submission for the newsletter, so again the newsletter contains nothing new in that regard..
So we're bucking the trend up here!
I think the class has to really get proactive about providing tools and incentives for building district membership.
I really blame US Sailing for running all these Junior Olympic Events without any regard the local fleets or districts. They are never require class membership. They never forward the participants email or mailing addresses to the national class or district.