Ideas for Fall 11' Spring 12'

[Jake]

Okay, I'm not trying to rain on the parade of ideas here. Just giving feedback based on the past few years of leadership.

i've always hoped for a TOTD trip, but that's basically because i've lived "close" these past years so its easy for me to talk it up. i'd tend to believe that if you look hard enough there are comparable drives in SW Virginia and eastern West Virginia. I've tooled around out there and you can carve it up all day if you map it right with 500% less exposure to police and lane-crossing dumbasses. seems like unless you're content with 33W you have to be willing to do some driving though

We've talked about a TOTD trip before. I've been on TOTD with the Miata group a few summers ago. It's really really fun, but police presence is HUGE and from a "club liability" standpoint, I and the other officers did not think it was a smart trip idea. The potential for fuckup is too great. People wreck and/or die with decent frequency - you must be diligent on the road. 33 West is very similar in style, and you can look at a map to figure out other great roads off of 33 in WVa. I think a day trip cruise could be very do-able and fun without the long drive or liability of the Dragon.

Based on our experiences with people not listening and driving like assholes on MM group drives around HBurg and to VIR, we eliminated all scenic drives this past year as we frankly didn't care to deal with the excessive hoonery that was going on. When you lose people in a string of cars, or follow too close, or whatever, it's not funny. It's irresponsible. This strikes a BIG nerve for me because the culprits (thinking mainly of the VIR trip) continually failed to recognize how their actions and driving style were inappropriate for the setting.

Go ahead and do group drives again, but start small with HBurg back roads (there are great ones everywhere) and maybe 33 West. Realize that the emphasis is on "scenic" and not "winning the race" and hopefully you will do well there.

I want to get some MM karts teams at the twilight kart enduros and what not..

This ties in with more of an MM worker/driver presence at NASA track events. Bring people to Summit and do karting teams! It's cheap and easy and tons of fun.

The MM Alumni that are NASA officials are trying to help this along as well.

Track presence has been fairly strong. It can always be stronger. I'd LOVE to see some students out doing Hyperdrives at the least. Please please please keep working to keep attendance up.

Maybe I'm reaching here but it would be nice to see a greater representation from the Northeast area.

I don't think this is something that can be controlled... I agree, it'd be awesome to see more members in general -- trying to get a "target market" of that part of the country is kind of a difficult goal. But greater marketing/promo efforts to get members would be easily do-able. Kristin mentioned being very interested in pushing the promo side of things, which would be so good to see.

Do some tours of FOW/race shops like back in the day.

We did FOW two years ago. It did not fit in the schedule this spring since we chose to emphasize the competition/track side of things. I enjoyed the tour, but I think if you do it as an "every other year" sort of thing it is more interesting. Julie mentioned the Ariel Atom tour which would be really sweet.