Ok, not to diss us, but after being at the Dragon and seeing how involved the other clubs are, I came to realize our club is just plain and simple...lame. I talked to someone from the Pittsburgh club, and they have officers, a budget, and do all sorts of cool stuff year round. We have breakfast once a month, and that's pretty much it. Other clubs have support from their local dealership...we couldn't even get MAG to donate a couple bags of candy for the local parade. And speaking of the parade, we only had FOUR cars show. Come on people, we really need to kick this club into gear. There certainly isn't a shortage of MINIs around here. Any thoughts? Or should we just start driving out of town to hook up with more involved clubs?

 

You can go out of town & try to find happiness. I wish you luck. I've been out of town to other MINI events & made some good friends. Too me the laid back atmosphere of this group of MINI owning folks is what's so great.

I crashed a Pitt Stop MINI club event with some friends from MINI NEO. What a nice group of people they are. Pitt Stop group is pretty formal & populated with nice folks.

Everyone has different interests. A few folks like to drive in parades. For me that would be agony. I love to drive fast around a race track. You don't want to do that & that's OK. Different interests shouldn't be a problem, Viva La Difference. The one thing we all do have in common is the love for our little cars.

I've posted a few ideas that fellow MINI owners might want to do. If it's what they want to they'll come. If not maybe we'll see each other somewhere else. Like breakfast at Tim's.

As far as presidents & officers go, have at it. Been there done that & It's not for me. Doesn't mean we aren't friends. Whenever an event comes up that interests me I'll be doing it.

I'm only one person & perhaps others will want a formal club. Good luck in your quest for MINI happiness.

 

Seeing as how I've been the one setting things up for the past few months, if things are sucking then it's likely my fault - guess I'm just not pickng the right events to get people out of the house. Maybe someone else can do better (shrug).

 

Matt my friend. You do the best you can & that's all you can do. As I've already said. Not everyone likes the same things. That's life. We all like our little cars. That's enough for me.

I've meant no disrespect with my posts & hope I haven't somehow offended you or Kara. Not my intention.

 

I am going to go out on a limb here:

It is a Columbus thing. The mountain biking group here in town is the same way nobody wants to do anything and it is constantly disorganized. The "problem" is that the majority of people in this city only care about OSU football and no other hobby compairs so they do not get into other things. Personally I hate OSU football and enjoy hanging out with Mini people and mountain bikers, so I do those things. I also have fun with the informality of it. Once you get presidents and treasurers it get too much like work.

That is of course all just my .02 for the record I think Matt has done a great job (you had me at hot dogs) How many people were at breakfast last month that was huge and I think that is what most of us like the most anyway (hanging out drooling on others cars and eating cream filled doughnuts mmmmm.) If we tried to do it more often people would not come as much.

Man I am rambling I gota go, see you guys at breakfast next weekend!

 

Great points here, by all posters. IMHO, here's what I think might be nice:

If our club had its own webpage - I find it a little awkward to go to the NAM site to find what we're doing. Plus I just get distracted by all the cool stuff! Me: Hey honey, I'm gonna be on the internet for a few minutes.
four hours later...
Wifey: Are you ever coming to bed?

A little more advance notice on some things would be nice for me. If I know about something far in advance, it gets scheduling priority. The website would help. For example, I just put "MINI Mornin" in my PDA for the 3rd Sat of every month. If I can, I go. If not, I don't.

Officers? This could go either way. I'm in other clubs w/ officers, and usually a club is just as good as its members. Sometimes when a person is empowered with authority to do something it gets done. If they are elected, they feel empowered. Alternatively, too much heirarchy can stunt individual initiative.

Sponsorship is key. OutMotoring is great! It would be nice if we had MAG, as well as a local garage or two (for mods) that would help us out. But it's a "cart before the horse before the cart issue": if the club isn't active, what incentive does a sponsor have? If the club doesn't have any cool discounts at vendors, what incentive is there to be a member? (especially if the payment of dues is an issue).

I agree w/ rigidjunkie: OSU rules. I also am in his camp: I don't really give a rat's a** about OSU. (Just wanted to have your back if we get jumped in an alley somewhere!)

But it's not necessarily Columbus. The Westerville Bicycle Club, as well as Hoover Sailing Club have great memberships, and turnouts. They also have officers, dues, bylaws, budgets, and the political folderol that come with the package. At some point someone will get inspired and really push us to s**t or get off the pot. At that point, we will all decide whether to support that person or not. A different-looking club will be born, or it won't. People will join, or not.

I have neither a conclusion nor a recommendation. I know I will continue to attend events when I know about them, and when they don't conflict with other family/work events (dang job - I could have a social life it weren't for the job!)

I'll be at Tim's on May 19. I'm gonna do the Riverrun on May 26. I'm going to MME in June. I plan on going to MOTD 2008. In the meantime, I drive my MINI, and wave to all the others.

C'mon, we can at least wave, right?

 

I don't care for that carp either. But if we get jumped in a dark alley for not caring about Buckaroo's & their footballs I'm going to say I'm Woody's illegitimate son & that both of you guys are from Michigan.

It's true about getting lost in NAM. Happens to me all of the time. It's also true that the lead time for events can be very short. Maybe an e-mail list would help people find out about things in a more timely manor. A website would be good, but I here they cost money. So far this one is free for us to use.

 

I stoped looking at all the other NAM boards, there is just too much stuff out there. For a long time I came here and wheels and tires, but I just bought some S-Lites so I just scroll to here and check it and move on to my other web boards I check.

Persoanlly I just use these board to keep in touch with people I have met or who seem cool and will come to stuff. Like Chuck is nice and all, but come on 20 minutes later you are posting a reply? You need to get on the real highway and off the information super highway

And thanks Londoncalling I now have that song stuck in my head!

 

I know I haven't actually been to any events or meet any of you, but I would have to agree with rigid on it being a Columbus thing. I was on a couple of Mazda forums before joing NAM and it was kind of sad to see clubs from Cinci and Cleveland organizing more things in C-bus then the people here.

I know that I personally would have a hard time committing to a serious club due to my position at work (a lot of unexpected weekend work and my busiest time of the year tending to be the spring/summer months. I like how informal this group seems to be.

On a side note, I am one of the people who is crazy about tOSU. My first thought when I saw that London's car was named "Tatum" and that it was CR was that it was named after Jack Tatum!

 

---------

...and 2 of your 4 cars were from the Dayton Club [Ohio Mini Owners]

 

Hey I have an ideal for a name for our club. Lame you say? How about Lazy A$$ MINI Enthusiasts? ....or LAME for short.

 

I like it! Ok - who's gonna design our grill badge? Or maybe since we're so lazy, we just have an empty badge holder.

Or just a piece of white dry erase magnet... that way we can write whatever clever acronym we want.

Ok - beautiful day - gotta drive!

 

I was thinking that using something with duct tape would be appropriate. I'll make it just like the Procrastinator MINI Motoring Club one I haven't quite gotten around to doing yet. Maybe tomorrow, it is a great day to motor.

Motor on....

 

Hey BAD -

Who in the freak is Jack Tatum?

 

I wanted to ask that, but was afraid I'd seem Buckaroo stupid. Has to be a Buckaroo thing.

 

Works for me....sigh.

 

+1

 

He was a safety for the Buckeyes from '68 to '70. When he played in the NFL he was called the "Assassin" because of how hard he hit people.

I'm not the type of Buckeye fan that would ever give someone a hard time about not being a fan. I just have such great memories of my time there (the best being that I met my wife there!), that I will always be a fan.

It was a beautiful day for driving, we headed out to Mt. Vernon to visit the mother-in-law.

 

Just kidding! Just funny though, because this is how all the trouble started up north (Crashton can act as a witness)! I soooooooo, want to meet many of you this Saturday, but alas, like B.A.D., work gets in the way many weekends. I am going to add the breakfasts to my calendar and as soon as the schedule permits, I will make the drive and say hello in person. In the interim, I will be waving at each and every Mini I see and hope to be out doing some driving with more of you when we can!!!

I will say, as has been directly, or possibly indirectly, mentioned in this thread, is that I agree that an email informing me of upcoming events is my preference. This is what I tried to discuss with the Mini NEO folks (after the question was asked of what could be done to improve attendance at events). I have looked at NAM more than ever over the past few weeks, but unless I am totally bored at work or home, yeah, right! (or just need to escape from reality for a few short minutes...this is much more the case), I don't sign on and read through pages of posts for minutes, potentially hours, upon end. I don't know if that's a blessing or a curse, but it's reality! I have at least bookmarked the Mid-Ohio Club so it's ez to get to, but still a lot of info to try to soak in in between the boss poking her head in (this would refer to both work and home! ).

Hope 2 c u all soon! In the meantime, keep motoring, keep waving and keep those tops down!!! Er, did I mention I have a convertible!?!

 

I see what you're saying... Unfortunately we have some limitations with email and such though. The MidOhioMotoring.com web site is actually owned and maintained by Aaron of Outmotoring, as is the email mailing list - I cannot alter that page nor do I have the mailing list. That site also does not have seperate forums, as was mentioned - these are the only ones. As such, anything that get's distributed via email must be sent by Aaron.

I know, however, that he does send out regular "newsletter" announcements like 1-2 weeks before events (I get them anyway) so I wonder of you're not on our (his) official list perhaps? I make sure to let him know about every event prior to it happening.

In any case, I'd love to have an independent web site, but quite frankly I lack the time and coding skills to build and maintain such a site. If anyone out there has the "mad web skillsz" to set up such a thing then I'd be willing to work with you on building it - I'm reasonably certain that we could use Outmotoring's web server space for such a project, and I'd be happy to ask Aaron if/when we get to that stage.

An ideal solution would have our own forums and some way to easily update news and other such things via a web form (PHP perhaps?). I know how to update such sites, create web graphics and administer such a thing if someone out there has the skills to code it.

Honestly, if we can get a site up and running (in such a way that I can easily update it on a regular basis) then I'd be willing to do things like have welcome/invitation flyers printed out for distribution at MAG and other dealerships, which I know other local clubs do. We might have to "pass the hat" at MINI Mornin's or something to help defray the costs of such projects. but I hope that everyone will contribute - after all, more MINI participants is by definition a good thing, yes?

 

Learn something new everyday! I was not aware of the http://midohiomotoring.com/ page. It may be talked about on NAM somewhere, but once again, I can only easily read so much before I get slee..................................sorry, dozed off! I will look at that site and see what else there is to see (and be sure to sign up for email updates (assuming there is such a thing))!

Thanks! (Can you tell I'd rather not be working today)!!!