> It appears to be an attempt to whittle out events which have only a tiny number of entrants
(At the danger of diverting this topic beyond the subject line) ....
I think that this is indeed the intention. To be fair to John Hamilton, this is something the committee discussed at the meeting before he became Events Secretary, so he's only the messenger. I do agree that the message in Arrivee seems to have raised more questions than answers, but I think it's intended as an early warning of intent and more details are to follow.
It's not my area of responsibility on Committee but I'll try to give you some response to a topic that I had expected would stir up some interest - and I've not been disappointed.
I think the intention is to draw attention to the amount of work disproportionally created by putting on small-interest events. This will include: scrutinising the event for inclusion on the Calendar, production and mailing of brevet cards, and chasing up organisers for the results.
However, somewhing I wasn't aware of when we discussed this is just how many events we have with low numbers (with Arrivee seemingly defining low numbers as "below 20"). Something like a sixth of all events would be penalised by this ruling, which is something I'm not at all comfortable with - and I doubt that my 400 and 600 would be on the Calendar under such a ruling. I actually like riding these smaller events with their imtimate atmosphere.
On the other hand, we have in recent years encouraged the growth of one-person events through Perms, and particularly DIY Perms, so there's definitely a move to more, smaller event.
I fear that this move might stiffle the development of new events and new Organisers, and restrict those who put on several events on the same day - even though Don Black gets about 30 riders, these are spread over 3 events, so Don is going to have to think twice about paying £30 up-front to register his events, and he'll be wondering what to do with his unused brevet cards.
It's also going to be a bigger problem in the Audaxing deserts of Mid Wales and the more extreme parts of Scotland.
This is something I want to discuss further with Committee at our next meeting later in the month, so your feedback on YACF is very timely and very welcome (by me at least).
- Is AUK committee correct in trying to outlaw the small events?
- is this the best way to encourage Organisers to grow their events? If not, what is?
- Should our team of volunteers who support the calendar events just get on with it, or should we seek to adjust our processes to cope with events as they really are, rather than as we might wish them to be? What if this means we need more volunteers ... ?
- Should we encourage the development of Audax in certain areas, possibly at the expense of larger events elsewhere?
- If you were to lose these smaller events, are you likely to ride bigger events elsewhere, or
- would you just ride more Perms?
- should we have some "official" way of organising Group Perms so that you can be notified and invited to join in with others on a Perm, as a replacement to these small Calendar events? (Remember, not everyone is on YACF)
So, more questions than answers. I'm just the Membership Secretary, and possibly speaking out of turn, but I can see that without events I might have trouble hanging on to the members (is it possible that might be taken that the wrong way), so I'm keen to explore this further.