Why? Because many clubs operations have a poor product to sell to new participants.
Gliding relative to many other adventure sports is not outrageously expensive, many Australians ski and that can be hideously expensive for example. Many Australians have the money to fly but are not attracted to our current style of operations. What will attract the 21st Century participant to our sport is an efficient, modern, accessible, value for money/time operation that treats the "customer" in the manner we consumers expect to be treated.
There is a place for traditional club style operations especially in regional areas but I would argue that either the near city clubs need to adopt a far more commercial approach to their operations or positive steps need to be taken to establish facilities that attract new participants by showcasing a modern efficiently run soaring centre that values the customer.
At 09:04 18/12/2005, you wrote
Emilis,
Your post contains a fair bit of depth.
I think it is much simpler than that.
The Clubs will thrive and grow if there are lots of new participants entering the Sport.
Soaring has a terrific product to sell. It is exciting, it is achievable, it fulfils a basic "need to aviate" in some people and it can be as challenging as the participant wants it to be.
It is not for everyone .......... but there is surely a reasonable number in the population who are looking for a pastime and to which it can be made attractive.
It will appear to be too expensive to some, and that has been discussed widely here ......... but a new Harley or BMW Motorcycle is $30,000 these days (and a couple of thousand new ones are sold each year), a new Elfin Kit Road Car is over $125,000 and a new 30ft Cruiser is far more than 2 new Sailplanes ........ yet the waterways are full of them.
I am convinced that if this sport is not attracting enough new participants then it is not being marketed well enough.
At a grass roots & simplistic level, how about we each buy 5 of the FAI's Millenium promotional DVDs and send them to friends that are not members but who you know would enjoy this sport.
John Roake's report says THE MILLENNIUM PROMOTIONAL VIDEO - We have just finished converting the soaring promotional video onto DVD. In fact all eight language versions are on the same disc. Click on the country flag you want and bingo - its playing. In cassette form, over 55,000 copies of this film have been sold. The DVD version is available in bulk at $US4.50 each.
Regards
_______________________________________________
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Emilis Prelgauskas
- To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia.
- Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2005 12:10 AM
- Subject: [Aus-soaring] the many glidings
- On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:20:29 -0800, Michael Derry wrote:
- >Do other people see the direction the sport is heading in ? Will it
- >affect us or future generations ? Do we, or should we care ?
- The range of contributors to the interrelated threads are always good to listen in to.
- When contributors disagree, I suspect that they are talking about different definitions of the core term 'gliding'.
- - if you want to fly at a commercial operation, fine
- - if you want to fly at a large club, ok
- - if you want to fly your own glider, yep
- - if you want to fly at a small operation, goforit
- - if you want the club to provide all the gear, easy - just show that $ + human value is there
- It is likely that then you will disagree with the definition/goals/priorities of others in other categories than your own. Pity.
- There seems to me instead to be an inherent strength in the diverse paths offered by such widely different approaches to gliding.
- In that it permits people from the outside to look at which one of these quite different formats is the one that appeals to them specifically.
- And possibly thereby attract more newcomers than would be if everyone gathered just under a single large umbrella. (a belief unsupported by any data)
- In my belief there is even a place for a 'no, we don't accept members of the public at any price' option. (Such option being only accessible to established rated pilots.)
- That one provides the benchmark of scarcity which put into a better context other clubs' entry point cost and accessibility conditions.
- In the same way as it is desirable to have large & small clubs, amateur, volunteer and commercial, club fleets spanning the spectrum vs clubs which provide only entry level gear and encourage/facilitate private syndication.
- Just as there are winch, aerotow and self launch clubs or parts of clubs.
- What I haven't heard on the list, is pilots aware of which of these categories their particular club fits into, what specific marketing edge/approach this leads to, which of these categories are the currently successful clubs.
- {I suspect these are the historically well established resourced ones able right now to appeal to newcomers of limited talent, funds, time and contribution to make}
- (I watch with interest the tone of enquiry from public change during the conversation toward finding out about just what entry requirements they would need, to be accepted into the 'no public' club. - ie go learn to fly, get rated, then talk to us about what glider you are going to buy - )
- As several clubs close to me know, I pass each and every of these enquiries onward to clubs who do do public entry points.
- On the premise that the enquirer will find that club appealing, or that they want to use it as the entry point to get later to another more suited format.
- Just as individual glider pilots do tend during their flying lives to move from one format to another as their available time, funds, interests change. (sometimes repositioning themselves within a club, sometimes by moving to another club)
- The level of 'paying forward' similarly varies significantly in line with the differing personal definition.
- Some pilots focus on the immediate needs to hand, some to those where they can see value-adding or advance, and there are even a very few who do non-core things which no one else in the sport and related organisations in their right minds can see any point to at all.
- Which then leads to chat on this list about 'why doesn't he/she put that same effort into what I declare is patently much more important.'
- Surprise, surprise - 'cause that person has their own view of what is most important.
- My own belief is that there was more congruence of effort and more success when there was a sport-wide overarching 'vision' that happened to encapsulate lots of these individual priorities.
- Each such vision appropriate to its time.
- When I got into gliding, it was
- 'an Oz pilot, flying an Oz sailplane, winning a World Comp'.
- In my estimation that got 'old' in 1974.
- I'm not aware of a similar overarching theme since.
- The stats tell the story of commensurate outcomes in my view.
- (No, I don't have an overarching suggestion to offer for here and now)
- (People who know me are aware of the fairly limited 'vision' that I trudge along after on an as-can, when-can basis).
- While I'm rambling on, permit me to note that just as club success is conditioned by local population circumstance, there are similar conditioners on groups of clubs in regions.
- People who travel more widely than I, tell me how different gliding is in Australia north of the grey nomad line, compared with west of the Idaho line.
- In one there is no shortage of current generation equipment at significant numbers of clubs and in private hands, contest entry numbers are high, etc.
- In the other, even zero-hour old generation stuff is rare and in single numbers, there are no contest venues, etc.
- Expectations of survival and success I suspect are defined in quite different terms in each.
- Now back to your regularly scheduled diatribes.....
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