Re: Official 2011 BMWSG Sepang Track Day thread
louis;639703 said:
TripleM, not targeted at you, just quoting your text:
Organisers also need to be open about how they decide who gets on the list beyond the first 40 cars. is it the 41st and 42nd person who pays? or is it restricted to a preferred circle of friends of the orgnisers? or are the names drawn out of a hat in a lucky dip?
i'm sure people who benefit will continue to think of BMW TDs as being very "friendly", but that tone will change once they end up with the short end of the stick.
transparency and friendliness are not mutually exclusive characteristics; in fact, increased transparency in the registration process and equity in treatment of members will only promote the current friendly nature of BMW TDs instead of undermining it.
I completely agree with you. On paper there is always an ideal method of doing things. In reality invariably there will be changes that test the on-paper guidelines. On paper I am supposed to turn people away at the door who did not prepay. In practice if they turn up due to a miscommunication, the organiser must decide if they have to drive 350km back immediately. On paper, if your car spoils despite your best efforts to make it to the track, you lose your $$. Coz thats life. In reality, I know that the loss of the td is genuine, and the penalisation of the track fee will be doubly painful. I try to refund if the numbers allow. On paper any refund on full 40 car track day will immediately equal to losses. In reality, sometimes it can be covered by a favourable exchange, or simply because everyone has contributed to the reserve fund all this while. Although it has never been expressly said, and I have never intended it to be so all this while, can't it be an insurance of sorts, for anyone who meet with a genuine technical issue. It could be anyone else the next time round. On paper if you have a personal emergency, as is with one trackkie this time round, you lose your track fee. But in reality I dont think the track fee should be penalised if we can help it. Also, this definitely depends on if the numbers that happen is logical or not. If its 3-4, its still manageable, based on our reserves. If its a logically higher number then of course we cannot proceed. I remember last track day I think 3-4 people paid up for the last sot on the same day. We definitely busted the 40 max slots. But who am I going to appoint the last slot to? I chose flexibility over hard rules for this scenario. What I'm trying to explain here is that there are several decisions that are fluid, not black and white, and are done on the spot, as opposed to it being planned before hand (invisible list). Who has the right to make such decisions? Nobody really does, because this TD is designed to be a communal one. But because I am the sole organiser in terms of clerical work, (as opposed to those who help out with orientation) I have to make these decisions on behalf of the community. Because I agree with Louis' points, and this is certainly in line with what I have been requesting for the past one year, a co-organiser(s) is welcome to come in and co-plan and lead the track day. On the one hand it eases the administration burden, but more importantly it eases the moral responsibility of making more difficult decisions. On paper, rules and regulations are cold and impersonal. In reality these ironically fly in the face of our entire primary aim to organise these track days for ourselves, (as opposed to just joining the fleet of clubs out there since it is much easier) which is for everyone to have fun. I try as much as I can not to be authoritarian, like an unpopular political party would, and I try as much as I can to be inclusive, but of course up to a point, because pleasing everyone would lead to chaos. In line with this thinking, you can now understand why I asked if you guys wanted to increase the track day slots >40. There are of course pros and cons which I am not blind to. So, thats also why I proposing increasing the number of track days, because we have come to a point in our club tracking history where demand finally outstripped supply. So as to accommodate everyone. I have been brainstorming and trying to come out with new ideas to better improve the track day but ultimately the decision is for everyone to make. On my part I do what I can to ease hiccups that come up. Anyone of you working as project managers of any sort will understand, NOTHING ever goes to plan. The whole plan is already spelt out in my first post of any track day registration thread, but changes come fast and furious, culminating in an orgy of changing orders as the track day draws nearer and nearer. My last registration change came at 547am on the very morning. And then there were 2 car breakdowns, and then one more that came to my attention after the event in the forum thread. My decision would be to refund, but I havent replied because I need to align my decisions with the community's too. What wouldnt constitute refundable, would be no-shows, and frivilous changes. As evidenced in the past when I marked out "no-shows" on the list and not given any refund. In fact, constant no-shows should be penalisable, because it robs others of a genuine chance to participate, but that hasn't happened yet. I'm sharing these thoughts with you guys so that you may understand the decision making process that I go through, as well as my style in implementing them. Obviously a different administrator with a different mindset will create a different style for the club, but currently, until someone steps up to take over, I will have to make decisions based on what I believe is a logical compromise between best practice on paper and best practice in reality. There's always improvements to be made, and additional checks are always welcomed. Hopefully with this sharing of how I try to manage the track day administration, you guys can understand that the decision was not made for a favourable invisible list but for the non-authoritative path I have chosen to run this track day by. I do have an unofficial list though, and that is the list of people who wish to be put on a waitlist, for whence people pull out. Now, on paper, if you pull out, good luck to you, as an organiser I have already received the money i dont care. But the creation of this waitlist is win-win. For the people who wish to pull out for non-emergency purposes, and for people who genuinely wish to join. I will call down the list and match them up with the empty slot. And this is based on time, and definitely not based on if you're driving a Zonda or an Altis. If you know me, I never place differentiating deference to people who drive different types of cars. Unless I change my style completely, there will always be friendly flexibility in the running of our track days. I do not mean, and have absolutely no intention to, and will never plan to, increase the participation rate to above 40. But because on certain times flexibility would mean that we may go a couple above, or a couple below, therefore understandably people on the short end of the stick will find it unpalatable. It is certainly not easy to please everyone and I recognise that at every track day someone could get upset. I do my best. For those who are interested to know the details of the miscom, please call me. I have no desire to post names online and point fingers. This is not my style. Next, I believe in the best interest of democracy and accountability (and also to share the workload la) we should have a constant change of track organiser. Or at least a round robin approach, like appointing auditors or directors. Anyone up for it? Fresh minds bring fresh ideas.
The next problem I have recognised, for which I am trying to find a solution for, is people being left out of the track day simply because they logged in too late. If the track day is take up in a week of posting, and there's no knowing when the organiser, ie me, will post up the registration, and the fact that all 40 are taken up fairly quickly, then it'll be unfair for those who happen to be away, then log in a week later only to find the slots all full. Because it is impractical for me to call everyone up whenever I post a new track registration, I've come up with 2 ideas. 1 is for me to establish a regularity. If I post the registration within 3 days of the last TD, regularly, trackkies will come to expect that one should at least log into BMWSG for the next 3 days following a track day and have a good chance to register. Instead of coming in 1 month later and find that everything has been taken already. Actually I was going to for this one, but I thought I should resolve the issue Shaun raised. 2nd idea is to send a mass email out once I post the thread, but that will require all parties to send me their emails and I maintain an email group for this. We can make use of existing BMWSG email-new-post feature. Perhaps all those who are interested in knowing when I post a new track day thread can subscribe to this thread (or a new specific thread I can start for this particular purpose). And when you see a subscribe email reminder in your inbox you will know i have started a new track registration thread. However this excludes people who do not have access to internet. Any other ideas? This is a common problem because over the 2 months before any track day I always get emails, pms and called from people who were away and completely missed the boat. It is extremely tedious for me to call one by one, which I did for a few track days. It was expensive, time-consuming, and particularly exhausting. So I'll appreciate any other ideas. Or perhaps this is what other organisers would like to look into. I shall also implement another idea for fee payment identification. My next biggest clerical headache every track day was to identify and match payments. I shall effect this idea when I eventually post the July track day registration. Also, are you guys okay or not okay with me gathering help for orientation? Or will the slate of experienced trackkies, which is about half of the field, be willing to come out with say 30-45 minutes bringing all the newbies out and orientating them to the safety and tracking aspects of the circuit. Let me know
Hopefully I have answered shaun and louis' concerns, which i say again i completely understand and agree, even if you guys didnt bring this up. I try to explain by not say, who and who did what wrong, but by explaining why then certain decisions happen and what are the reasons why i think and decide on certain issues, so you know what goes on in my head. Not trying to have unofficial list, but by trying to be all inclusive. After all the entire point of why we are doing this is for everyone to have fun right
