rsrmoto_monster-titanium

UKMOC leadership in 2025

Mr Gazza

Mr Gazza

Lord of the Rings
Joined
May 26, 2013
Messages
6,068
Location
Norwich
Bike
M900sie
Happy new year to all and I hope you're all looking forward to a whole new season of riding.
Before you start wondering too hard about why this is posted in the wanted section, there is a reason if you read on.

So to re-cap; I took over running UKMOC in July 2023 after the sudden resignation of the sitting committee.
I never intended nor wanted to be the President or Chairman whatever you want to call it. I thought it would be a temporary measure until things got sorted.
A year and a half later and I'm still here! I retired from work in September and I'm trying very hard to simplify my life so I can enjoy the good things like riding my bikes and learning to play guitar.

I've been pretty much dodging bullets to keep the club going. First issue was to raise money to pay for server costs, since we had become divorced from Ducati and their financial support.
I managed to find a couple of advertisers to bring a little in, but I have been overwhelmed by the support of the membership with your donations and uptake of merchandise sales.
Finances are still in good shape and I can provide accounts from the start of my tenure till April 2024 upon request. These were kindly prepared by Dacs and are available on pdf. I can also provide a rough current balance and some projected expenses if anyone is interested.
The next bullet came in the form of our poor obsolete website crashing the host's server and generally being a ruddy nuisance and rather clunky to use, as well as having some security issues.
As you know, Rob (Slob) has worked tirelessly to create this brand new website, find a new server and get the whole thing working and installed.
All I have done to contribute to that is to offer encouragement as often as possible, sign things and pay the bills as they come up. I'm afraid anything to do with IT beyond sending an email is utterly bamboozling to me. I'm not at all qualified to do any worthwhile administration to the forum!

The club is in good shape financially and has a spanking new website, so the future is bright, but I've only really been doing a bit of basic housekeeping and the club needs so much more than I have the energy and knowledge to achieve.
Social events have taken a big knock, what with lockdowns and general apparent lack of enthusiasm for meeting up and riding with likeminded folks.
It would be fantastic to see the return of an annual gathering like the Weekenders we used to have.
Area groups seem to have faded away too and I would love to see local meets happening again.
This is a motorcycle club after all!

So this is where the "Wanted" part comes in.
I will be standing down at the beginning of March.
We need willing people to fill the roles of President. People to become moderators and admin. And people to get behind organising events, meets and ride outs.
None of this is hard, it just needs some enthusiasm if the UKMOC is going to continue and grow.

Please have a good think about what you can do to help. I'm happy to have a long chats about what is involved and help in any way I can.

It's with you.. Hope to hear from you soon.. (y)
 
Just to bump this.
I've edited the title to be less cryptic about the serious subject of this thread and just want to re-iterate that I will be standing down March 1st 2025.

I think that should be plenty of notice for anyone to have a serious think about what they can do for this club.
Please give this your serious consideration. It's not expected for just one person to run this, there's room for a good team to take it further.

Please feel free to ask what is involved, or make suggestions about what improvements you would make.
It would at least be good to see a conversation going here.
 
Well isn't this just the perennial issue for clubs, who will actually put their hand up to help run it.
Gary and Rob (and quite possibly others I'm not aware of) have been doing a great job on members behalf, getting the club/forum into a healthy position for the future, so thanks very much for that.
 
Thanks Mike.
Jonzi and Kato have been making valuable contributions and Ped has always been there toiling away at the general running and signing on new members.
Dacs has also bashed the club accounts into a readable form as acting Treasurer.

Of course if no one steps up and we shut the club down, the question of what to do with the funds rears up.
It will be easy to refund advertisers pro-rata and refund all those who have so generously donated via the donate button since it was installed.
The rest I would probably send to the East Anglian Air Ambulance, with maybe a reserve held to maintain the domain name.
Suggestions welcome.

If you don't want this to happen, now is the time to be arsed.
 
Well I have to say that I find the lack of responses to this CRUCIAL thread a bit depressing. Is nobody out there really that bothered? Are members just assuming that somebody else is going to put the effort in, so they can continue to enjoy forum and the great resources it provides. To not even be willing to discuss the matter is to be honest, simply pathetic.
Yes this is a bit of a rant, but are we men/ women/them or mice.
 
Bitza, can't agree more, I've not added anything yet, as I intend to speak to Gary about this next week.
It is a worry that there doesn't seem to be a great deal of interest from the members on the forum to organise meet ups/ rideouts etc.
The forum appears to rely on a few stalwart contributors these days as well. It will be interesting/ agonising to see where we go from here.

Dave
 
I would be interested in Helping ,, but i cant take it all on, but I can help take on some of the admin donkey work , mind you i dont have a clue about running a website , servers or any of that stuff ????? and sometime im Not in UK im in Thailand .
would be able to help organise runs in UK etc ,, could I be trusted as a moderator ... hmmm ???
 
But Jerry, you're already doing the work of two men. (Laurel and Hardy. 😆)
It would be great if you could drum up some runs and meets, especially regular meets in your area.

Just to reiterate that no one has to to run the whole shooting match. If a few people did a little bit it would be less for the others to do.
The more the merrier, so long as you talk to each other, just bring your particular skill or preference.
 
Gazza now im Down in the Cotswolds im sure I can arrange a few good meetups at some nice places ,, nice roads around here .. We could all hit Clarksons pub at Burford one day and wreck it,,,,, but I would rather go to James Mays lovely pub near Salisbury ha ha ,, seriously lots of good places round here .. But the weather must improve ...
 
I'm thinking there might be an elephant on the thread (not to be confused with the Cagiva) for people of my generation, which is the requirement for tech knowhow with the tasks that are needed to be done to run the club. We are often quite happy to fabricate a new bracket, or tension cam belts etc, but not so confident with tech beyond posting on here. Maybe it's just me?
 
These are strange times for social interaction. Not just for forums. Lots of people strugle. The most common "solution" is to put on headphones and stare at a screen. Maybe, just maybe squeezing out a "like". Fortunately there are feel good experiences too. The gap between numb and awake create new opportunities. So, the job done by the few who bother (a.k.a. Somebody Else) is appreciated more.

This means that the job ahead can be quite modest. The members who remain able to be pleased (with anything) are easier to please.

Just a few rides, coffee meets, one mechanical event (use a dealer), one national invitation to track event (use external forces) and of course an active forum (please promote the new easy picture posting)(it's essential).

Somewhere, probably not self nominated, UKMOC have a few IT-experts (Slob'ish level) and the daily admin work is not very hard. Nomination by public showing of hands is probably not working. "Somebody Else" will contact the board themselves OR they have to be apointed. My experience is that it's often easy to get a yes if people are asked directly.

Transition is often difficult, maybe painful, but the UKMOC have enough weight, history and valuable members to do this.

See you later!
 
It's good that you've raised this Mike, thanks.
Yes there is a tech element to the website and to the higher degrees of admin on the site, but that's not what running the club is about.
I am the biggest IT ignoramus you could wish for and I've managed to run the club (after a fashion!) for the last 18 or so months. Looking after the website is a different department and another skillset.
Rob has tried manfully to educate me and I seem to retract from it all the more.. I don't like it!

Let's try and break this down.
Starting with the role we will call President for the purpose of this.
He or she could be more of a figurehead than anything, presiding over the club and all it's workings without necessarily having any hands on dealing with the various tasks. Obviously this is where the buck stops in the event of contention or decision making, and they would be the spokesperson.

Webmaster, admins and moderators would be another group with varying degrees of involvement with the IT side of things.
Webmaster(s) would look after the nuts and bolts of the website. Rob has taken this to the extreme by actually creating the website and knows it inside out. I know he would be glad to have some relief at some point, so there's room at the top for a fully IT competent person(s).
Admin is a bit more general and involves registering new members, adjusting permissions and keeping things up to date.
Moderators have can have various extended permissions and keep the peace, so to speak, by monitoring posts and editing and disciplining where appropriate. Few IT skills are required at this level and even I can manage it!

We do now require someone to manage the finances, there are now two bank accounts. The bank will be starting to make charges in April so that's something to attend to by finding another account or transferring it all to the PayPal account.
There are bills to be taken care of and money to be raised by advertising and Merch.
This could probably be split into two or three roles, say, account holder(treasurer), advertising manager and merchandise.
Some of that would probably overlap, but it's possible for more than one officer to have access to the accounts for instance, so again a bit of teamwork will work well.

I think there is also a need for a Social Secretary/Cheerleader/Road Captain, Joyce Grenfell enthusiastic type to try and get events and local meets going. The club used to have a host of such members who would host Weekenders, think of novel ideas for runs and ride-outs as well as representing the local area groups.
It doesn't have to be an official post, I'd just like to see more people having a go.

All this could (and has been) dealt with by a single person, but the more people that do a little bit, the easier it gets and the better it gets.
Plus if someone wants a rest (like now.) it's far easier to absorb his/her role among the rest of the crew.

The club has been through a tough and challenging time for sure. It's time to be getting back to some serious fun.
Get involved.
 
Mr G. I'd be happy to chip in with any admin or mod stuff you might need. The club has given me so much over the years so maybe time for me to give something back if I can. I'm an IT guy of over 30years but don't currently have a PC since being made redundant last year I had to give it back! PM me if you think I could help out?
 
Yea, Im a qualified Sharepoint admin! I did all the courses on that and did all that plus my own job on top.
 
that name still makes me shudder even though i haven’t touched sharepoint for ten years, when www stands for world’s worst wiki
 
I know what you mean, you do have to learn it because it's so different to Word or Access. Hard to believe it's a Microsoft app really, it's like they were consulted but took the day off!
 
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