BMW CAR CLUB (GB)
SOUTH EAST REGION
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BMW CAR CLUB
CENTREPOINT 34
BMW CAR CLUB - CENTREPOINT
A REPORT FROM NATIONAL COMMITTEE MEETING
No 156 - 10th September 2006 - Issue 34
National Festival at Gaydon – Shakedown
This was the largest National Festival yet, with an attendance figure between 3,500-4,000, (probably more, as many found a way in from the paddock parking area without having to pay), with 2,000 BMWs on site! The tech clinics went down well and the Aston Martin test track was as popular as ever.
Entry to the festival at the top of the site was handled by the Gaydon marshals, assisted by Andy McArthur and his team who filtered display cars out of the many BMWs flooding into Gaydon. This seemed to quicken entry onto the site, with few complaints from visitors this year. By 1.30pm, all car parks were full!!! On the lower arena, our club marshals performed an admirable job keeping the traffic flowing and assisting in getting everyone parked up in the correct areas – well done everyone!
We were let down for the second year running by the no-show of the mobile rolling road, obviously we will not be asking them back a third time! The clubs tombola was a huge success, with all tickets sold by 12 noon! We did have a few complaints re lack of food & drink stalls and we will make sure there are more for next year.
Although the concours entry was slightly up on last year’s figures, the Concours Committee were still disappointed with the entry. They are now going away to work on a new entry-level category that should attract some of the Show & Shine participants into the Concours arena.
Mentioning the Show & Shine, this was again a huge success, with all entries taken.
Postage Costs/membership Fees
We have still to fix the exact costs of membership fees for 2007, but we do believe that we have found a way to keep membership fees for current members at the same level - £35 – Unfortunately, due to the hike in postage charges, there will have to be substantial rises in membership fees for overseas members.
October Donington Show – Bimmerfest!
The show is nearly fully booked up! We have no more room for Regional stands, most of the registers have taken stand space and approx 80-85% of trade space has been sold. We are negotiating with the Donington owners to see if we can squeeze in more ‘smaller’ or ‘amateur’ autojumblers (who will pay a nominal fee to erect a paste table or two with parts on) without flouting fire and health & safety regulations.
There is also security controlled ‘safe’ parking opposite the entrance to the hall.
IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR ALL REGIONS & REGISTERS – PLEASE READ CAREFULLY –
Articles in the Club Magazine/Straight-6
It still seems there is some confusion regarding the allocation of space within the magazine for regional/register articles, and the amount of space allocated to them. In our endeavour to continually improve the club publications, we looked closely at the layout of the magazine. We wanted to give the magazine some structure, so the first job we did was to ‘tidy up’ the magazine by placing all regional and register pages together as they had been scattered throughout the magazine in the past, forcing the reader to use the index to find them. This is now achievable without use of the index as they are all consistently placed together in the same place in each magazine.
We then noticed that although the pages were called “Regional Roundup” and “Register Roundup” with sub headings of (for example) “South East News” and “02’ Register
News”, these pages contained much more than just ‘news’ items, with reports on drives out, regional concourses, car maintenance (in the register pages) etc etc – good reading, but hardly ‘news’. Therefore what we have done is to move all regional and register ‘articles’ into the main body of the magazine, leaving the regional and register pages for what they were designed for – concise news on forthcoming events/changes of events/changes that effect the region/register – in other words, concise snippets that effect the region/register and its members.
All other articles, be they concours reports, fun runs, club stands at classic shows, visits to places of interest, register meets, maintenance reports etc are placed in the main body of the magazine with NO limit on the amount of pages used (we do ask for people to use a bit of common sense, as a report on a fun run by say, 14 members can’t expect to occupy two or three pages).
We are now a club of 5,000 members, so space is tight in the magazine, so we may get times when non time dependant reports/articles are held over in a ‘bank’ – we have been advised that this is normal in the publishing business and allows banked articles to be used when there is a lean time for articles coming in (usually the winter months).
Please all make sure that all photos supplied with articles meet the minimum standard of 300dpi, and all copy should now be sent to bmwmag@quorumtech.co.uk
I hope the above helps to explain how the regional/register news pages work and also clears up any misunderstanding regarding the allocation of pages for regions and registers.
Registers
There is a ‘Register guideline’ document available – please contact the club office if you need a copy.
New Office Premises
We have made tentative enquiries regarding a new build unit that would house the BMW Car Club offices on a new commercial park in Melksham. Once we have more info on projected total build costs, unit size etc we will report back.