We had the annual club elections at the last meeting and to my eternal surprise no one was nominated to be an officer so I will continue in my role of 'club manager'. If you didn't know, this started last year during our elections where I decided I was not going to be the president again. Since that didn't convince anyone to step up I volunteered to be the 'club manager' and keep the lights on while the positions of president and VP were kept open for people to volunteer at any time. So, as you can imagine, that basically meant that I would do everything. And so that happened again last night...
While I am honored to continue representing the club and getting the necessary things done (meetings and rides) it also means we don't have anyone assisting to learn the processes and getting the members at large to know them and get comfortable and ready to step up to running the club. That's not good. It's not sustainable...
But I hear from people that we are doing a good job (Tarek with the rides and me as the manager). We could do more if we had some volunteers to help. Here are a few ideas we had this year that just didn't get done are:
- Club ride to the Barber Sports Museum in Birmingham
- Club ride (with spouses invited in cars) to visit Newman's Castle in Bellville
- Some shorter rides around Houston for ppl who don't want to ride all day
- Other ideas? We need some people to help make them happen!
Here is a quick overview of what I got done this year:
- Started "Meetups" in north and south Houston to try to 'decentralize' the club from the single, main club meeting on Thursday evenings downtown at the restaurant.
- I got more active on Facebook (which I have avoided for years). But as I post things I see that over 300+ people see the posts and many 'like' and engage. So a lot of people are using it so I need to get better. I recently created 3 FB groups which are more interactive (chatty) than just the main page. Those groups are 1) the main club group, 2) the North Houston group, 3) the South Houston group. Check them out and post something!
- I organized the "Dragoo Adventure Rider Training" (DART) for about 50 people up in the national forest.
- I encouraged people to attend the BMW MOA National Rally in Lebanon, TN and we had about 20 people attend including many for the first time.
- For the 5th (or 6th) year I organized about 20 riders to ride race officials in The Woodlands Ironman National Championship for the bicycle part of the race. For our participation the Ironman Foundation donated $1000 to our club.
I have talked to people about other ideas to improve things in the club. The next major change I think we will try is to move the main club meeting to Saturday mornings from 9 to 11 am, still at the Spaghetti Western Italian Cafe. Traffic is such a hassle during rush hour I think a lot of people just don't want to put up with it. To help me decide please complete this quick anonymous survey to gather votes, interest, and ideas about that. I just want to try something different.
If you are paying attention to the meeting reminder emails we have about 150 paying members which is really good. It inspires me to keep doing things to earn those members' trust and confidence in the club. We could do more but it means more people need to get involved.
The single biggest thing that I would like to see is more individuals just posting and engaging with our social media - Facebook and the club forums. There are interesting things happening that I read about in various publications, websites, Youtube, etc. Rideapart, ADVRider, BMW MOA, international tours, etc. I will try to post more myself but if you come across something interesting just reach out and share it. We have a wide range of diverse riders, from very old and experienced riders to quite young and new riders, and everything in between. What you think isn't that unusual or big of a deal might be very educational for someone who hasn't been riding for that long. Let's get more information out for everyone!
Thanks for your positive comments and continuing support of the club!
Jerry Matson
Club Manager
BMW Motorcycle Club of Houston