Re: Official 2012 BMWSG Sepang Track Day Thread
As a continuation of our discussions from the 2011 thread, I would like to summarise these points of considerations. I will come out with some suggestions, and then after your inputs, we can adopt them as guidelines for the registration process for our 2012 track days.
- Rollover of track fees to next track day. We shall stop all roll-overs of track fees till the next track day. This is because as the track days went by, we have a bigger and bigger block of participants automatically getting a slot in the next track day, and a huge % of spaces are blocked out the moment the regstration starts. Thus, those who cannot make it will have their fees forfeited, or refunded, or passed on to next guy according to whether we have > or < 40 cars. However for this final 2011 track day, as I'm closing out the account, I endeavoured to refund every single guy who pulled out of the TD. Remember we had about 60 cars, we now have 40. This process was extremely tiring for me, especially when I only have a maximum number of online transfer accounts I can leave in my internet banking acc, meaning I have to constantly delete and add new payees. Thus, I will try to minimise refunds until towards the end of the year. However this also means that even if you have funds with me, you will have to re-register for the next track day as if it is totally unrelated to the previous one, but the only difference is that you need not pay again. This would work, but you will need to trust me with holding onto your track fee.
- Block registering. We have had people coming in to block register for their friends. This fills up the list pretty quickly too. Collectively how do we feel about this? Should we hae a limit on how many people can one member register for? And if yes, then will it be 2, 3, or any other limit?
- Eligibility. We have had observations on people who only come to our TDs and are usually not part of our overall bigger community. To touch on this point, we need to reexamine our purpose of organising this BMWSG track day. We are doing this on a non-profit basis to benefit our club members with activities, and also to introduce BMW owners to the sport of track driving. If this was done like a profitable business then eligibility will not be an issue, but because it is not, we need to reexamine the group of participants who are benefitting from this voluntary event. There are several different groups of participants currently:
a) Active members of BMWSG.
b) formally active members of the forum, or not active in the forum at all, but have consistently been around for events and activities like track
c) friends of BMWSG members but are not active in the forum, but have consistently supported the track day organisations from 7-8 years ago when it was in dire need of support.
d) friends of BMWSG active members, who are not active in the forum, but are recently joining our track days only and no other events.
e) New forummers who drive BMWs.
My view is to include a, b, c , e. What are your views? Please give me your thoughts. Remember we do need to balance demand and supply. Too much contriction of demand will also have a detrimental effect on the viability of the continuation of the TDs. Everyone who has joined us previously all played a part in keeping this exercise alive.
Also, how do we enforce this? If a relative stranger signs up for the track day in time and pays up in time, then if we at that time have some eligibility criteria, then how do we enforce it after we carefully read through the list?
- 4 hour track days. I have managed to secure 2 x 4 hour track days. The cost is still the same per hour, at 6000rm/hr. So the track fee should be simply upped by a third. With 4 hours, we have some flexibility. How do we want to use this? There are a few ways, which are
a) a simple 4 hour track day
b) segregating the hours into portions where we can do low-car-count session, time laps, other activities like mini races, drags or drift sessions, newbie coaching and orientation, or simply squeezing more participants into the track day without feeling overcrowding because of longer time. Any other ideas? Just keep in mind the hourly rate, and the segregation cost can be easily calculated.
- Cost. I'm toying with the idea of upping the charge by S$5 per pax to S$200 (instead of $195). The extra $5 is to cover some of my costs, especially nowadays I'm just travelling up to Sepang without tracking my own car, but just to facilitate the event. The ringgit equivalent is 450rm. It's already a nice round number so I dont want to touch that. And everyone has the freedom to choose which currency to pay in. For avoidance of doubt, should the track fee be entered into our reserves, I will enter $195 instead of $200. Is that alright with everyone?
- Payment. Because our situation has somewhat changed since 2 years back when I took over the running, from an oversupply to one of overdemand, the original purpose of securing a registration slot by payment is now redundant. I will still require pre-payment to be safe, but from 2012, we will have 2 weeks to make the transfer. So that I dont inconvenience you guys by requiring everyone to rush to make payment, but 2 weeks should be comfortable enough for everyone to find time to make the payment.
- Block payment. From the other thread, there's a suggestion for regular trackkies to pay for upcoming sessions (and possibly for the whole year's) in one shot. It sort of goes against the idea of preventing rollovers because they block out chunks of seats. But this is something we can explore too, perhaps with no refunds. But if the trackkie cannot make it, this might block out one proper slot should the guy not be able to make it, because it's not a matter of $ here, but rather making good use of the slot for as many members to enjoy as possible. What are your thoughts? I am totally neutral to this idea.
I'm not going to make any decisions. The decisions will be made based on comments posted here in this thread. I will forward some suggestions (like those above) if there are none, and or, to facilitate discussion, but decisions will be collectively made. We have quite a bit to discuss and agree on over here. The original track day registration for Feb 4, 2012's session was on 12th December 2011, 12pm. I have tried to establish some regularity on the opening of the registration of the track days, on days and times where most people will have access to a computer and also have some time, which is on the monday immediately after the last track day. But since there are quite a lot to discuss and agree on, I will push the registration one week later to 19 December 2011, 12pm, just for this once. Please take note of this date, and also please inform your friends about it.
