Organising meetings

[Forumadmin]

Back in the 1970s as membership sec I analysed the membership based on the county everyone was residing in and put them on an overhead foil. I also tried, based on their selected section, to draw some section boundaries.
Here is that map with the numbers in each county as figures.

It might be interesting to see how the demographics have changed. What it did show was the need to have more centres of activity to include more members in meetings. It should encourage people to organise meetings local to them and contact those in the catchment area.

With technology these days I am sure someone could pin each meeting on a map with details of when and where popping up when the mouse crossed over it.

Since I have now scanned that 40 year old foil I will bin it! There you go, Chris.....

[Jack]

There were some interesting numbers published in the Jowetteer, an approximate breakdown of the membership by area they were registered to (I think) when subscribing.

The numbers seemed to be a bit higher than on the OHP slide above, presumably because the club has grown since the slide was made, but worth us keeping for the records anyway.

Perhaps worth copying the information from the Jowetteer to update this thread.

I wonder how many members consider themselves to be a part of more than one section, and there must be many who live in one geographic location but are active with another section - for example we have had a lot of engagement with the Midlands section but are geographically in the Southern Section, there must be many others in the same position. With motorways, the internet, and e-mail, increasingly distances between people are becoming less of an issue - even international members are forming bonds with different sections in the UK membership.

I know there are some who feel that they are members of the club, and do not have a tie to a particular section. In a diving club I am a part of they have the option not to be a member of any local club, and to join directly with the central club, which has a co-ordinator who communicates to them what is going on (like the Jowetteer does), and they dip in and out of club activities with several different clubs. It is quite a good way of doing it for some, though many still have a "home" branch.

Jack.

[Forumadmin]

Another view without the distraction of county boundaries.

The membership list shows the selected section of each member and generally that matches where they live, except for our Chairman of course.

When I did the study to set up a meeting in our area I worked on finding members within one hour's driving time by Jowett. Out of 100 members contacted we got about a dozen regulars. Things have changed immensely since the 1980s. Members are older, but more are retired so have the time, petrol is actually not much dearer, traffic is denser, there are more motorways; but more traffic calming.

Anyway let us all try and organise a meeting! Some may travel more than an hour to get there, or just be passing by and make an effort to join in if the meet is advertised well (That is here in the Section News!).