Clubsmartcar

[MikeT 744]

This is an update from the 6 Directors of ClubsmartCar, regarding the current status of the Club and its Website, and how to improve them in the future.

Firstly, there is the status of the governing members, the “Directors”. The last election for the 6 Director positions was held in Spring 2011. There was no election that year, because it was all the collective membership at this site could do to nominate one person for each Director position – none of these nominations were contested. So all 6 nominees were acclaimed. The term for this group was to be two years, which expired in June of 2013. There have been a couple of enquiries as to when the long-expected election will actually be happening. The answer is: probably late in 2014.

Cameron Speedie, our former Webmaster, has had to withdraw from that capacity and has also resigned his Directorship due to having insufficient time to devote to this function. We needed a Webmaster, and at a meeting of the Directors in February 2014, Max Joyce (FlossyTheSmart) was appointed as Webmaster, and he was also appointed to fill the vacant Directorship, until the next election. We are lucky to have a person as skilled as Max to step into this role!

The reason we will not have an immediate election is that there are a number of technical issues facing the present Directors which we feel should be addressed before asking the membership here to choose another group of Directors. These issues are described below:

1. Forum software: presently, the forum runs on a 2007 version of Invision Power Board. It has never been updated. This software was purchased by Dean Husby (TFM in the forum), the founder of this website and Club. The Webmaster advises that a new version of the IPB software is expected to be released soon, and we really should purchase it in order to provide a far better platform for this forum into the rest of this decade. Max is also recommending that we subscribe to the IPB annual maintenance package in order to receive incremental improvements to the software as they are developed.

2. URL ownership: the founding member of CsC, namely Dean Husby, was the person who originally registered -- and still owns -- the domain names “clubsmartcar.ca” and “clubsmartcar.com”. Dean is an inactive member here now, but he has renewed these URLs every year without ever asking for a contribution towards the cost, which is likely in the order of $30 to $40 per year. Dean has expressed an interest in passing the ownership of the URLs onto Mike Tippett (Mike T), because there isn’t a not-for-profit CsC entity (yet) to take on that role. Discussions concerning this possible transfer have not occurred yet, and the Directors feel that some sort of compensation would be due to Dean for his previous payments on behalf of all of us, the membership. We will report back to you when we know more about this.

3. Club funding: CsC does not have a legal existence insofar as it is not a registered entity, and therefore CsC has no bank account or budget to pay for new software, hosting data server, URL renewals, never mind sponsoring local club events. Clearly if we are to continue, this is a necessary component to be addressed. The Directors have therefore approved a plan to run a single banner advertisement (Google AdSense) on each page that is loaded, which we hope will generate sufficient revenue (proceeds will go directly to our Webmaster) to not only pay for the software upgrade and related conversion expenses, but also for the annual IPB annual maintenance package and the host data server. If as we hope, this initiative covers our costs, we will not have to appeal to members for support or worse still, make this some sort of a mandatory “user-pay” site. We don’t want to go there! That said, there will be a “Donate” button somewhere on the site if any members are feeling benevolent and wish to make a voluntary contribution towards the ongoing running of Club smart Car.

4. Possible future incorporation: there were discussions back in 2006-2007 concerning our desire to incorporate as a not-for-profit Society under Industry Canada rules. The advantage of doing this is that CsC would become a legal entity and would then be able to better develop a relationship with the manufacturer of smart (for example, the use of the image of the smart 450 in our logo and T-shirt designs) as well as other entities insofar as that would benefit the Club, and have control of its destiny as a collectivity. This initial attempt was not successful as there were significant costs involved and there were certain technical problems with the draft Bylaws that were not corrected in time. While the present Directors don’t wish to pursue this in the remainder of our time here, we think that this matter is worthy of further discussion and consideration by the next group of Directors.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact one of our Directors (each of us has a blue “Directors” notice under our avatars) and we will do our best to answer your questions and consider your comments. Thank you for your attention, and long live Club smart Car!