Niko and your mailbox - Page 2 - Dallas Ft Worth Aquatic Plant Club DFWAPC

ranchwest · 07-06-2008, 06:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tex Gal

Since I've just joined not long ago and can't make the Sat meetings I'm not sure what you've tried. Some suggestions to increase participation:

1.Each member donate equipment, fish, shrimp, substrate,etc. from which to do a random drawing each month. I understand that you do swap plants at each meeting. If yall are like me you have a fish box with stuff that you don't use, extra light, filter, etc. If you raise shrimp that could be a donation....

2. Bring a cd with pxs of your tanks. We'd have a time where we show the each person's tank, issues etc.

ALSO: I would be glad to host a meeting at my place. It can be any other time but Friday night sundown to Sat night sundown.

Good ideas.

As far as I know, the club has more money than we've figured out how to use. So, I assume we could buy door prizes if we couldn't come up with them any other way.

On the pictures, I think we need pictures of both the good and the bad. Show those difficult to grow plants and those baby fish that survive in the plants, but also show the algae problems, the over-growth of plants, the difficiencies that we're not sure whether they're related to light, ferts or something else. There could be a lot of discussion from pictures. Getting the pictures in ahead of time would help.

CherylR · 07-07-2008, 05:31 AM

I really wish we could have this discussion on one thread. Sigh.

In my opinion, the slowdown of the club can only partially be attributed to the economy. I think it's been a question of less and less communication among club members. In any given group of people, about half will not remember to check this forum for new messages without reminders. So they won't know about the meeting at all unless you contact them via e-mail. Then another 5% of them don't ever check their e-mail, or changed their e-mail and forgot to tell us.

There is an e-mail mailing list called dfwapc, but it hadn't been updated in a long time. Niko was posting here, then I was re-posting it on the mailing list, but half the members weren't on the list and half the people on the list weren't members! This has been fixed. You will all get e-mails from this list. No one is using it to chat anymore, so likely it will just be meeting announcements.

So who is in charge of marketing? The Vice President is supposed to be in charge of it, but we don't have one. Niko was doing great, even though he works three jobs. I tried to help a little this year, but I get very busy with TAG and disappear for weeks several times per year, which makes me very unreliable for that chore.

Here's a point I *really* want everyone to hear. This is a CLUB, which means everyone has something to contribute. I think for a long time it has been Nikolay's sole burden and that's not fair to him. Look what happened when he had a family emergency -- nothing.

Things are looking up, though. Several people have offered to host. I'll be in touch with those people. The e-mail list is current. The two threads where we are discussing the club have 200 hits. Mike has a digital projector that can be plugged into a laptop. We have heard some good ideas for future meetings and no one said, "Nah, that sucks."

That's encouraging.

ranchwest · 07-08-2008, 09:38 AM

I'll be glad to help out.

I'm also one who can only help a portion of the year. I am away much of the fall.

In Niko's absence, we need someone to make some basic decisions, such as meeting sites and dates. Cheryl, can you or Mike do that?

CherylR · 07-08-2008, 09:43 AM

I *am* doing that!

ranchwest · 07-09-2008, 08:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CherylR

I *am* doing that!

Hope it didn't seem that I was implying you weren't. I was just lending support to the idea of moving forward.

Thanks for all you do.