I went to ROCtober. ROCtober ran smoothly. In my opinion, the only thing
about ROCtober is that it’s heavily person dependent. Going back to what Rick
said about club strength, this is a concern. Mike Kramer does a remarkable job
with ROCtober. I don’t think it would go too well if for some reason he wasn’t
there. This doesn’t take away from the other people that help at this event
btw.
Like other things in rocketry, rocket club dynamics are interesting. ROC
planning, logistics, and operations are unique. Some things that other clubs
do would not work well for ROC without some fundamental changes. Anyway,
things could and will improve. The emails might appear to show more stress
than there really there is.
So, regarding what you said about doing too much for a club of our size, again
I think the most important thing is that we do what we say we are going to do.
And, do it well btw (which includes safely). For example, advertising
(website, announcements, etc.) shouldn’t suggest that “don’t worry, we got
this” when in fact we might not, or at least without stressing a few people to
do it all or make up the slack.
From: Allen Farrington<mailto:allen.farrington@xxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2016 9:51 AM
To: roc-chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx California<mailto:roc-chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [roc-chat] Re: ROC Election and Being a Strong Club
I think that it’s interesting that we seem to always have this discussion after
ROCtober! ;-)
All kidding aside, big events naturally stress out a club…so perhaps we should
not be concerned that everyone gets stressed at ROCtober.o
As of today, ROC has 139 paid and lifetime members.
If we use national club statistics we should have:
7 Members who always show up and run things (5%)
21 Regular Participants (15%)
28 Occasional Participants (20%)
I would claim that we have many more than 7 members that show up and run
things…I can count about 12. We have more than 21 regulars that show up and
pitch in here and there.
ROC is strong and has stronger than average participation and help in running
the club. So in the words of Lee…”Let’s all Relax”.
ROC is also in great financial shape, we could go for a year without income and
still hold launches. We’ve been regularly and consistently updating and
upgrading our equipment.
So what’s the issue? Perhaps it’s that we’re attempting to do too much for a
club of our size. Running LDRS required about 25 people doing various things
(before and during the launch) and with a year of planning and coordination, it
only stressed out a few of the folks (me included). But we all knew that it
would be that way when we signed up to run it. ROCtober may actually be more
stressing since we did about twice the launch density (launches/day) as we did
over the LDRS.
Perhaps the adjustment needs to be made in how ROCtober is planned and
executed? Perhaps it should be treated more like an LDRS with a formal
committee that splits out the work load?
Allen
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Allen H. Farrington - K6AHF
L3 - NAR 73474, Tripoli 12280
http://www.allenfarrington.org
818-653-2284
