Hey Macca,
Don't knock us 50+ lot. Some of us didn't discover
gliding quite as early as you did, and maybe we took a bit longer to learn as
the younger guys. But we can still become addicted, maybe more so. With family
left the nest us old guys can spend a bit more time at the Club - both flying
and helping. I'm doing everything I can to make up for lost time. And I know a
few others like me.
Dave
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 6:41
PM
Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] A NEW APPROACH
TO GFA PROMOTION & MEMBERSHIP??
It is a problem teaching the 50+ group - think
they should have a tax to rebate young peoples flying. I learnt as a teenager
and we got money back thru "Royal Aero Clubs" for when we earnt our C or was
it our clubs got the rebate. I am getting a young kid who earnt
points through "work for the dole" and the government are paying an intro
course of $600 - another kid Coles-myres paid for his flying thru working at
Bilo. They are better kids to teach than the ones whos parents throw the
money at gliding. Actually we have a "wait list" of currently 4 people
who want to learn - we want to look after the student we already have rather
than overload the system - and let the new lot start in say 6
weeks
Ian McPhee
--- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 9:10
PM
Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] A NEW
APPROACH TO GFA PROMOTION & MEMBERSHIP??
I read the link below.
Seems that those who participate in
gliding do so before regular sex and after they can't remember what it was
:-)
Now if anybody knows a marketer who can
convince the public that gliding is better than sex we've got it
made.
Seriously though, training 50yr+ people is a
hard slog. Ask EP or any instructor who has had a few. Our "Old Bomber" Eric
Bates was a breeze as he had learnt to ride the bike when he was
young. I do not derogate this market niche as there are many
others who are chasing it in this period of demographic
change.
Also on oldies, I am retiree and will not
glide on the weekend unless it is for a special reason.
I am getting close to the top of my family
hierarchical pyramid and there is always something on like baptisms,
birthdays engagements, weddings etc. etc. which I am expected to attend and
which I do enjoy. Before I retired I was the "old fart" who never came to
anything because I was at the gliding club. I am lucky that my club
can accomodate weekday gliding as golf, bowling etc. clubs do for retirees.
This is something that needs to be taken into account if this market is
pursued.
The airminded oldies could be one
of the saviours of our sport in the short term but in the long
term I feel the sport for "ordinary" people is doomed for reasons I won't
discuss here. There have been many activities, that have had their time
and passed. As for myself I intend to enjoy it unfettered and to the
full as long as I can.
Chris McDonnell
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 6:02
PM
Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] A NEW
APPROACH TO GFA PROMOTION & MEMBERSHIP??
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 1:09
PM
Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] A NEW
APPROACH TO GFA PROMOTION & MEMBERSHIP??
Robert Hart wrote:
> Geoff Kidd wrote: >
>> I would council the GFA to take
(pay for) professional advice on >> key issues such as
marketing etc. > > Agreed - but only after some extensive
consultation in-house - ie with > the members. It is the members'
organisation and they should have the > major say in the
direction their organisation takes. Once the goals are > known,
expertise to help achieve those goals can be paid for.
Don't
agree, Robert. The goals are already known;
Extensive consultation with the members is going to deliver the same
outcome we're already talking about here, namely that the sport needs
to be grown.
The particular ways in which it is grown aren't
(or shouldn't be) important to the current members. We all
happen to fit in to a culture that says lots of time and not much
money is an ok way to learn how to fly, otherwise we wouldn't be
here. So our ideas about the way to go about this, as shaped by
our personalities and experiences are automatically incompatible with
the potential customer base we're talking about here.
In
short, if GFA engaged in detailed consultation with the members, and
the members recommended the particular direction to take, then the
members would effectively sabotage the process by recommending a
direction which was familiar and (for their demographic) "tried and
true." The safe option is the one we already have, because
(for us) it has worked.
Taking a new direction requires the
organization's management to take a risk, to do some stuff which
hasn't been done before which is targeted at growing the sport.
Consultation with outsiders, not insiders, is necessary -- outsiders
will have perspectives that would simply never occur to the likes of
you and me, and (by definition) they're the kinds of people we need
to appeal to.
> but I would suggest that there is a heap
of untapped expertise > amongst the GFA membership.
...
and look where it's managed to get us.
Forget it. Just pay
someone who really knows what they're doing, instead of relying on
volunteers who *say* they know what they're doing.
Frankly I
don't give a rat's arse about whether the strategies employed by the
GFA to grow the membership are compatible with the views I'd put
forward if I was consulted, as long as they work. The end justifies
the means.
> I am not suggesting that the membership take
> on entirely the production of the business plan (few members
will have > both the time and expertise available to do that),
but this is where we > should start as the membership will have a
set of views that are bound > to illuminate the issues in
interesting and useful ways (some of which > will be negative -
also good to know).
Yeah, great, if we want the whole process to
get bogged down in bureaucracy for five years while half the
membership argues about whether they've been consulted enough and the
other have bitches about the fact that their responses to
consultation have been ignored, then that might be a good
idea.
There are too many prima-donnas in the gliding movement who
will be only too happy to vociferously oppose anything that they,
personally, don't feel happy about. When you have enough people
like that with opposing views, it's always easier to blow them all
off and just get on with the job. Who cares if there are a
handful of seriously pissed off people who think they're being
ignored if hundreds of new pilots are joining the sport every
year? That's an acceptable price to pay, in my opinion.
We don't *need* the entire existing membership to be happy if there
are plenty of new members coming in to replace the ones who are upset
enough to leave.
> Hmm - *I* do not want to set the principles
and aims - but *we* (the > membership) should do so.
We
already know what the aims are: lots of new pilots, enough
new money coming in to grow the fleet, everyone having fun without
having to get emeshed in the day-to-day running of the national
body.
I doubt that there has been a single national exec in the
last ten years who hasn't known what those goals are. They
haven't failed to achieve those aims due to ignorance of what they
are, they've failed to achieve them because the stuff they've tried
hasn't worked.
If you spend the next five years consulting,
you'll have arrived at the same answer and wasted five years, and
you'll *still* have an exec who knows the right answer but doesn't
know how to implement it.
So stop wasting time, hire someone who
does, and make the problem go away.
-
mark
-------------------------------------------------------------------- I
tried an internal
modem,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
but it hurt when I
walked.
Mark Newton ----- Voice: +61-4-1620-2223 ------------- Fax:
+61-8-82231777
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