gkotlin;226912 wrote: Again, we're not even into 2012 yet. Give them time to work things out and they schedule will work itself out.
But will they? I mean, for a start, my membership is coming up for renewal soon. Am I supposed to put down my money to renew and just hope that it all works itself out by springtime?
The truth of the matter is that, at the moment, STT's marketing has NESBA's beat, by a mile or more. At least around here, they seem to have pretty well established themselves as "the track day organization," period. The fact that they evidently have more tracks and more dates locked up on a regular basis does plenty to keep that image alive. Is that the only problem? Maybe not, but if they can pack the riders in, every time, they must be doing something right.
It's not that they're the superior organization. I don't know, having never been to their events, but I don't think so. Everything I hear (from our side, admittedly) says they leave a lot to be desired in terms of operating a day. The term, "structure," keeps coming up: we possess it, where they lack it. It seems to work, and even some of their regulars that I talk to on a regular basis, who know the difference, agree that our upperclassmen are faster than theirs. This is all well and good, but it's not something we (as an organization, never mind the region) have done much to capitalize on.
The sales pitch is that we're a track day organization. It pretty much ends there. To which the rider shopping around answers: so what? There are many. What makes you worth it? Most of the regulars, I suggest, know at least two good answers: camaraderie, and quality. But I also suggest that the casual rider doesn't care much for that. The competition (for the most part) offers reasonable quality, and camaraderie isn't much of a concern when you go out for only two weekends a year. And there's a down side of structure, too. The casual rider wants to go out and have fun, and the idea of having a fairly rigid approach makes it seem like work instead. It's not like having the structure there is ultimately a problem. Far from it. My understanding--and I hope someone with knowledge can jump in and expand on this--is that STT's beginner sessions are actually quite rigidly structured: movement between sub-groups is loosely controlled, but during a session, you stay in your pack, at least during the morning, and follow one instructor the whole time. The structure leads to better learning, but it's the looseness between sessions that's attractive to many people. Again, the notion of just going out to
ride, on a track, is what many people are looking for.
I won't say STT is an example for how we should work. Heaven forbid it. There's already a scent of their operation hanging around here, particularly in the changes to the membership fee structure last year and in the midday beginner's meetings. The fear I had last year about these things was that our organization had given up on finding its own way around and was playing follow-the-leader. It's not a happy sign when that happens. It usually signals something between laziness and desperation on the part of the management, and it often ends badly. If NESBA is going to continue in operation, I suggest that it needs to remain distinctly NESBA, not "that other club that also does track days," which is the road a couple of other organizations seem to have gone down, often on their way to oblivion.
And what makes it distinctly NESBA, aside from the people (which is to leave aside an enormous part of it), seems to be the quality of the riders that eventually come out of it. Never mind how many or few tracks are involved. With STT you go out and ride, but with NESBA, you go out and ride better. And that's not something that gets mentioned much, officially.
Not that a lack of tracks is irrelevant. It's kind of a key point, having tracks for people to go to. There are plenty to choose from, but just going down the list, we are very definitely weak on that point as well: of the 10 Midwest (and Mid-Central) tracks listed on our Web site, only 3 seem to be candidates to get on the calendar this year at all, hardly a creditable number for a group of our size and age. If the rumor mentioned above is true, and we really are not paying our bills on time, that is a serious problem and probably the quickest route to driving that list from three tracks to zero in a hurry. If false, the fact that the rumor exists at all is no testament to our credibility as an organization. As it is, the fact that we list tracks, like Autobahn, as "Tracks We Ride," when they've been off the calendar for a couple of years, doesn't lend the organization much credibility either.
Hence, my question: should I renew? Step back and look at it a moment. Here we have an organization that is not necessarily marketing itself very well, and that is not doing the things that make it look credible, such as committing to the schedule (remember, last year the "These Dates Are Tentative" banner stayed up the entire year, right to the end), or assuring the membership that the bills are being paid. These are not favorable signs. In fact, these are the earmarks of a dissipating organization, uncertain not only of its strengths but also of its stability. Why should anyone be confident in tying up their fortunes with this group, when it's not even confident in itself? Why should anyone put their money (or their time or their labors) into an organization that can't say, with reasonable certainty, that it will return on the investment?
I definitely will not suggest that this is an easy business, or that setting up track days, much less running them, takes no work. Just look at the acrobatics involved with getting the karts dates nailed down and paid for. It is work, hard work at that. Even harder is the task of getting people to sign up to ride on those dates. It may not have been so hard at a time when there weren't many other options out there, but it is harder now, and it's going to take deft marketing and some serious action on all sides (national to lead it, regional to run it, and membership to back it) to make it continue to work.
Greg, with respect, just saying things will work out in the end sounds an awful lot like you're fiddling while Rome burns.