The deal tomorrow is to eat at the B&E 8:00...Bob Evans... across from MAG in Dublin. Then go over to MAG & kick the Clubmans tires at 9:00.

After the tire kicking Aaron is opening Outmotoring for all your MINI needs & wants.

 

Thanks! I built and maintained the Myers Motors site for their first couple years... but as they grew I recommended they go with a real marketing firm so all their collateral would have the same look and feel. I've built a ton of sites since almost the beginning of the net...

I was the founder and first President of the Jacket Backers... the official fan club for the Blue Jackets... so I have some club and car type web experience although I'm not involved with either at the moment... I think it would be fun to do a low pressure, fun and interesting MINI club site.

I totally agree with the previous poster who said that this can be a faily inexpensive venture... Go Daddy sells domains and hosting for next to nothing.

I've looked at a number of the listed MINI club sites... I think we could whip something up that would get everyone's attention... if that's what you want?

And YES I am an Old Fart!

 

Perfect... I'll be there... I'll be in the Silver/Blue Top Boxster... it's kind-of getting traded in on the MINI... a friend of mine is buying it off of MAG when I trade it in... BTW this is about the same trip I take every morning, I work for Cardinal but my group works out of a building on the OCLC Campus... so the office is practically on the MAG lot... in fact, I'm told that the building I'm in is where they use to train VW mechanics... I guess the MAG folks were huge in the VW world in the begining.

 

Mid Ohio Motors owns the club domain till 3/22/08... so maybe the timing is good for everyone concerned... a little Terry tidbit here... anytime you want to know anything about a domain go to http://www.whosit.com/ it's all public record:

Domain Name: MIDOHIOMOTORING.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
Name Server: NS2.FREESERVERS.COM
Name Server: NS3.FREESERVERS.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 16-sep-2006
Creation Date: 22-mar-2006
Expiration Date: 22-mar-2008

 

you'd better have my cigars...or, you'll have to deal with my wife

 

Note to self....

Be very nice to Jeff & his wonderful wife. Espescially if Mark forgot the exploding cigars.

 

Howdy folks, I was just catching up on some reading and found this fun thread....thought I would chime in a bit...

First, we appreciate all of your kind words and great friendships we have created over the years. Having all of our friends in our casual club (that once was very formal before I took over a few years ago)...is a major part of my life and we will miss everyone whenever we end up moving to Charlotte....

We will not be moving unless we sell the house in New Albany which could take a fair amount of time in this economy.

When we do move, I want to support the club here in whatever way works for everyone. I do currently pay for the domain registration and hosting for MidOhioMotoring.com but is RARELY visited and it's sole purpose in my opinion is to forward people to NAM and to let them know we do have some sort of club/group in the area should "Mid Ohio MINI Cooper Club" show up on a google search. That can all change and I will support whatever everyone wants. I am happy to turn the domain and hosting to anyone OR just keep it running and keep forwarding people to this forum, which seems to work. I think NAM/Mark is open to expanding the club's forum capabilities and even offers turn key packages to do so....i think it would be nice to have some sort of integrated image hosting, forums, newsletter, calendar, etc...again, I am sure mark has something done or in the wings waiting that may do this already....

Building and maintaining a new site with all the features needed is quite a bit of work which may be out of my comfort zone (for any club-regardless of where I live...), however if someone wants to have the domain to do that, I will glady hand that over.

I am also more than happy to just keep it running as it is not a burden at all.

Right now I have a roughly 370 person mailing list for the MID Ohio Motoring club newsletter that I maintain as part of my other mailing list databases...that is part of my overhead and costs roughly $75 a month just for the mailing list feature which I am happy to keep going if someone groups a bunch of monthly events or announcements and emails it to me or whatever..I can even export that list of emails (separate from my Out Motoring general mail list) to a responsible person should anyone be ready to manage that and continue the local mailings....

In any case, the bottom line, i will do whatever everyone wants. I don't consider 'ownership' of anything that is related to the club. To me it is just part of the fun and want the best for everyone involved....in the past we did have dues and meetings and presidents and such and it was PAINFUL to say the least.....the club as it stands has a nice organic feel to it but I sure having a little more site capabilities to support the club would not hurt...(see notes above)....I would also agree with Matt that the breakfast location out by me could easily change to somewhere more central when we move...

We used to meet at the Bob Evans near Granview and it was a pain to park and get everyone in and out of a sit down place without driving the staff crazy....any casual meet and eat place would work....maybe near sawmill or something or by Bethel or something....

Anyways, that will all evolve as this becomes more of a reality....in the meantime it sounds like a good thing to discuss the options here and hash it out before committing to anything that may end up hurting the loose knit club thing we have....

 

My name is Terry Shaw and I just met the group for the first time on Saturday... I don't believe we had the pleasure of meeting. I ordered a new MINI last week... it is to be built tomorrow... I hope! When it gets here I hope to become an active member of your Club.... and a good customer too!

In any case, I left my new friends 2/16/08 inspired and when I got home I stared working on a little site for the Club [yep, I'm a geek]... a couple people had mentioned a need on Saturday so I thought what the heck... I'll see what I can do. I spent some time reviewing the many other MINI club sites and I think I came up with a pretty nice look & feel... simple, clean and flexible, however it's just a prototype and certainly up for debate if the Club decides to go in this direction. A little history... I've been wanting a project in order to keep my skills sharpened... and building a site about me would be pretty boring... so this work would be fun and advantageous for me. Additionally, I would love to collaborate with someone on this site... that's a good way to learn new and better skills!

Be sure I certainly don't want to step on any toes here... nor is their any obligation to you or the organization if you don't like or want my work... I just heard a need and am simply trying to help.

Once I got done with the prototype yesterday, I had no place to put it to even show everyone... until recently I had a site dedicated to my Electric Car but I let it expire. I didn't like the Domain Name. That's where I used to put my prototypes/concepts up for others to view.

So, to solve that problem, I went to GoDaddy.com bought the Terry-Shaw.com domain, hosted it for a year with a ton of space and mail addresses for $56. The Club could do something very similar... there are many options available from GoDaddy... Blogs, Mailing lists et cetera... all of which would raise the sites costs a bit... but still very reasonable.

In any case... when I checked last night GoDaddy was setting up my account and Terry-Shaw.com was begining to float around and populating the world's DNS boxes. By tonight I should be able to put the club prototype site up for everyone to see... if you are interested?
Thanks,
Terry

 

Thanks for providing your perspective. Hopefully, none of the previous comments gave the impression we were trying to wrest control of the club from you. I think the initial reaction to your news caused some knee-jerk reactions. As it stands I think the location of Outmotoring is a solid anchor for the club and losing it will require some shifts in the way we do things. Whether that means more structure or less remains to be seen. Regardless, thanks for being upfront and honest about your life-changing events.
Now to figure out a way to make sure your house will never sell.

 

+ 1

 

You guys are great. That is one of the reasons I love this 'club'...

at any rate, it sounds sizedoesmatter has some work that we should see and maybe use if godaddy makes it easy to have a club forum, newsletters, etc. It sounds pretty cheap and if it works and people like it, getting the 100$ or so a year to make it work should be pretty easy if there was an auction once a year to pay for it...maybe club members and Out Motoring could donate stuff (even take offs) and then have an event to auction stuff off to pay for all the years expenses, that way there is no need to have dues and all that painful stuff...

 

I'll put the site up tonight so you can see it... the attached Image is what I started with... I tried to make it look very MINIusa... The "Home Page" picture can change often and be more club centric as time goes on... but I kind of liked this shot, so I used it... I've added some Flash Components... MINIusa.com loves Flash... So, the prototype now has a scrolling banner at the top that will/can display current news, events, whatever... The Message Board Link comes to here... the site currently doesn't have much content but I put a pretty cool Flash Photo Slid Show on the Gallery page from the pictures I took Saturday... we could have a ton of these... the utility I have condenses pictures down a lot. So if members want to provide pictures we could have a lot of them... It seems, from the posts I've read, you have a Club historian of sorts, perhaps they could provide content for the "About Us" page.... I put a very simple Calendar on the "Events Page" and a link to your site and MAGs on the links page.
Thanks,
Terry

 

I see one potential problem. You'll need to do 2 sites, one for R56's & one for R53's.

Just kidding & for the record I'll go either way R53 or R56, supercharger or turbo, justa a Cooper or MCS. I loves em all.

Nice work Terry.

 

very cool!

 

Whatever you want my friend!! Looks like I'll be able to do this tonight... I just got an email from GoDaddy... so if I can get my Dreamweaver connected to their FTP service we'll be in business... The site actually looks nicer then the picture... and the navigation seems to work well, I think I have everything wired together correctly... I just want to be sure all my Flash stuff works as expected.... so hold your reviews for a few hours... I should have something for you to really look at before I go to bed tonight.

 

FYI - I spoke to Kris at MAG while we were there and it seems as if he is also setting up a mid-Ohio-centric site to promote MAG's MINI presence in the region. I don't have the details, but it sounds like he's in agreement with me that some sort of financial incentive (perhaps an accessory coupon to be given only to those that show up to a club event) is a good idea. I'm working with him to see how we can dove-tail the club into his plans, but bottom line MAG wants to be a more active part of the Mid Ohio Club, and I personally believe that we should take advantage of this fact. Everyone wins.

I admit that I don't know all the intricacies of organizing a MINI club - I sort of volunteered myself to take more responsibility - but I DO know from talking with other club organizers that many of the larger, more successful clubs have at their core a close Club/MINI Dealership relationship, and I'd like to capitailze on MAG's new interest in us.

Whether this means that MidOhioMotoring will be the beneficiary of this work or some other, to-be-announced club I have no idea - obviously there are people here that like the casual, no-strings approach that we've been using for the past few years. personally, I'd like it if our club has something for those people as well as the folks that enjoy a more formalized structure, along with all the perqs that go with it (a treasury fund for club-sponsored events and a true web site, etc.).

I guess what I'm saying is that nothing's been decided yet, and everyhtign I've done has basically been on my own with little feedback from Aaron or anyone else - that's why I'm asking the questions I am. I am NOT looking to impose a structure on anyhitng that people don't want.

 

Aaron, I didn't really get to talk to you on Saturday, but was wondering what was the print you had laid out on one of the benches at MAG?

Matt, also wanted to thank you for working with Kris to get Saturday set up. It was a good time, wish I could have made it to BE beforehand (I was so jonesing for some biscuits and gravy that I talked wifey into going to BE for dinner that night ).

 

Yeah, we had a LOT more people at Bob Evan's than I expected - I showed up at 8:00 to keep Welshman company in case he was alone, and we ended up filling 4 or 5 tables. Awesome.

What would be cool (once we've moved beyond Tim Horton's out by Outmotoring) would be if we could find a local restaurant, centrally-located, that isn't too crowded between 8 and 10 on a Saturday to meet at. When i was in Chicago, we used to all go to a place called Highland house for a Sunday-morning motorcycle get-together, and I still have fond memories of my early-morning breakfasts and rides, so replicating that in central Ohio would, I think, be good. The question is where?

The good news though is that is sounds like Aaron's not moving any time soon ("summertime" seemed to be the general time frame), so we can keep enjoying our current breakfast schedule and trips to Outmotoring for the next few months at the least - we don't have to decide anything soon.

 

While not centrally located the Der Dutchman in Plain City is a huge restaurant with a huge parking area & a great place to meet. It's a bit longer of a drive for some, but IMO worth the drive.

Oh by the way the food is excellent. Comfort food all the way.

http://www.dhgroup.com/en/pc/pc-restaurant.php

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie...7&z=16&iwloc=A

Comments or questions?

 

Their breakfast buffet is delicious, and they certainly have plenty of parking. Not sure how crowded they are that early on a Saturday though - by mid-day the wait can be considerable.

 

I don't mind at all that the breakfast is a little bit of a motor. Heck from Hilliard, New Albany is a motor! Mmmmmmm chicken pot pie for breakfast.

 

Be careful not to run over any of the "road apples" when parking next to the buggies! Seriously, let's just stay at New Albany until Aaron and Andrea sell their home...

 

there's a bob evans and a tim hortons on the corner of olentangy and king ave. I vote there!

Dan





side note, this is 30secs from my house so sorta a joke post.


double side note, Dan <--- lead web designer for OSU undergrad undergrad.osu.edu :p

 

As long as there is a twisted way there the drive is not an issue for me. I know it creates issues, but it would be nice if we could rotate the location so it is not the same place every month.

 

Rotation of the site means that everyone will have to continuously check the calendar (when we have one) for the right location. Possible, but we might frustrate people that go to the wrong location. Worth keeping in mind, though.

Agreed - nothing will change until Aaron moves. Once Outmotoring moves to SC, however, I see no reason to keep going to the Tim Horton's in New Albany though - the one by OM is small, cramped and the service is sloooooooow. If we're going to move the location, I'd rather start discussig it now though - hopefully someone can come up with the perfect location: someplace convenient to the majority of people in Columbus, not too busy on a Sat. morning, with good food, a big parking lot and close to twisty roads. That's a tough order, so I expect it will take several tries to find just the right place...