"State of the Club Address"

[NoSlack]

This message is also posted in the Members only section. If you can read it there, add your reply there. For those of you that can not access that area, post your comment here. This is important information, please take the time to read it.


As most of you know Charlie doesn't have the time he use to, to tend the flock. What does that mean for us? It's time for us to become financially self sufficient as well as technically self sufficient.

Technical: Charlie is working with me on this area and we've made a lot of progress in the last couple of days. I believe I can take care of the routine maintenance on the message board and the pix board if we can bring it back to life. Charlie is working that site over with a big hammer this week to see if it's savable.

In the future it might be a good idea to have a second guy up to speed on this stuff as well. For the really complicated stuff like software upgrade, moving to our own server and picking up the pieces after a site crash, we will need professional help. We've had some preliminary talks with one of the founders of Bloody Decks who is a whiz on this stuff.

Financial: This is where we all need to step it up and show our support for the club. This message board, the bocapix site and the followingsea site are on rented server space that we will need to pick up the cost for. Charlie has us covered for the next 8 to10 months on his server space. Come next fall we will need to pay $40 to $50 a month for server space. We may be paying Charlie for that space, or we will pay someone to move everything to a new server and pay them for the space. The annual cost of server space will be $480 to $600 based on the estimates we got last week. If we choose to upgrade any of our software, tack another $100-$200 to our cost that year.

Let's take about software. Our current message board works find and meet our needs. Our picture site is broken and Charlie is looking into getting that back online for the $88 I was quoted from PhotoPost. If we can get it back online for less than $100, that could be our most economical solution for our photo needs. The maker of out message board software (V Bulletin) is coming out with new software at the end of the year that will have photo hosting built into it. I believe it will run us close to $200 for that up grade.

Over the years there may have been 10 or 12 of us were pitching Charlie a 20 at the BBQ to help with the cost of running the site. Do the math, we didn't come close to covering the cost.

Raising funds: We had some conversation at the BBQ and I continued those talks with Charlie this week about ways to raise funds. In the past if you contributed once, your status was change to BOCA Member and you never lost that status. That might change. An idea tossed around was, if you contribute you will have BOCA Member status for that year. If you are unable to financially support the site, your status will be changed to Senior Member. Everyone wants to know what they get for their money. We talked about moving all the fish report topics into the members only area, like the MB Marlin Club does. You will also have photo hosting privileges. If you don't support the site, you won't be able to read our fish report or have us store your photos. Does that sound fair?

In closing I would like to say we have time to think this out and do the right thing for the club. We have 8-10 months left of riding Charlie's coat tails, but come next fall we need to be self sufficient. We can always take the proactive approach and make our move sooner.

I would like to hear what you guys think about the future of the club.

Mike

[Laura Mei]

This site has been a great help for me and I want to support it ... let me know how much and to where and I will send a check. Thanks for keeping this going.
Charley

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

[NoSlack]

I took a quick head count of the registered users that logged on to the board in the past year. We have 29 guys with BOCA Member status and another 18 with regular membership status.

If we can get 25 of the 47 guys that log in every year, to contribute $25-$30 a year we'll be in good shape.
If it turns out we are 10-15 strong, then it's going to be a little mor exspencive.

Let this thing simmer for a few weeks and we'll have a better idea how many guys there are to help share the cost.

Mike

[Time Out]

Mike
What ever I can do just let me know, 20 dollors or 100 dollors is not going to kill any of us. The site and You have been a great help to all of us.

Besides how can we pick on Meeker without the site.

Russ

[DOGHOUSE26]

Russ is right, the cost of the membership is nothing compared to the technical info No Slack, Hijole, and Knot Now Phil provide us; with their help you save hundreds on repairs with the "how to" guidance and where to obtain the lowest cost parts. Custom retrofits like Charley's Pilothouse Captain's Chair and Mike's halibut rig holder help improve our enjoyment; and then there's hardcore guys like Honeygirl, Fire Escape, and Patron/Riley spend alot of time out on the water, catch all the fish, and tell us how and where to do it. Scott always goes in a different direction than the fleet, still finds and catches fish, and then shares a favorite recipe that you would never think of trying. You can't get this stuff anywhere else!

My job is to keep trying to teach Russ how to use the Spellcheck button and to pry all those excellant rockcod spots out of Pepe so we can all have fish to eat in the winter.

[Freespool]

Russ is right, the cost of the membership is nothing compared to the technical info No Slack, Hijole, and Knot Now Phil provide us; with their help you save hundreds on repairs with the "how to" guidance and where to obtain the lowest cost parts. Custom retrofits like Charley's Pilothouse Captain's Chair and Mike's halibut rig holder help improve our enjoyment; and then there's hardcore guys like Honeygirl, Fire Escape, and Patron/Riley spend alot of time out on the water, catch all the fish, and tell us how and where to do it. Scott always goes in a different direction than the fleet, still finds and catches fish, and then shares a favorite recipe that you would never think of trying. You can't get this stuff anywhere else!

My job is to keep trying to teach Russ how to use the Spellcheck button and to pry all those excellant rockcod spots out of Pepe so we can all have fish to eat in the winter.

Well said. This site and the people on it are a wealth of knowledge and a great source of help. Mike let us know how much and ware to send the funds.

[Wa Mei]

Mike,

I will be more than happy to send a check...thank you for your help.

[Mac Attack]

Count me in !!!!! HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL !!!!!


Mike

[Knot Now]

count me in

Thanks for the kind words - Jeff

Cutter

[Heron]

This is a great board with great members. I would be pleased to support continuing. thank you to Charlie for all his past effort. Thank you to Mike for keeping the torch burning. Bill Fender