Merger with GRS, your input is needed

Fat Tony · 02-17-2008, 04:26 AM

It was great to have a sit down to discuss where the club was headed. We made progress by deciding that it would be best for the club to unite and have our own centralized .com website for newbies to search for and get info about meetings and the all of the different forums we are active on. Brie has graciously volunteered to pay for the hosting of this site. We have decided to hold an official vote at the March meeting @ Joe's to decide on the name and decide on what the meeting schedule should be. There have been several volunteers for upcoming meetings, including Tom's BBQ which will be an unofficial gathering of the club. Bucky_338 and his wife Brie will host the April meeting, there are plans to have a group buy or two on corals and possibly supplies. as well as frag and sand trading This is an exciting new start!

What needs to happen now you ask? I need everyone that has an opinion of a name(s) and/or meeting schedules to PM me their ideas by Mar 3. This is forLOCAL MEMBERS ONLY. I will gather names and will post a combined list to be voted on at the meeting. If you will not be able to make it, you can PM me your vote by the 14th. At the meeting on March 15th, a vote will be held and a name will be decided upon. At that point the groups will become one, and the name will be changed here and several other forums. Then the club will set up a website. The website will be for important data, and news only. It will also direct people to where the members of the club like to hang out on the net... TRT,RC,RM..etc...

As you know there are no dues collected by the club. If you plan on attending the meeting (please do, see the March meeting thread)please donate like $5 for the new website...it isn't going to cost much for everything, but it is going to cost something, and someone is going to have to pay for it. I will post here the new address when the site is complete.

Thanks everyone, and please come to the March meeting!

ILuvMyGoldBarb · 02-18-2008, 11:02 AM

I PM'd this to Timmy on "The other site" (known as bchymist there)and he suggested I post it here. Just some thoughts from experience.

Sorry I missed the last meeting, I thought I was too late, turns out Tony was later then I would have been. lol I just wanted to share with you my experience with aquarium clubs in hopes that it will help keep things going. As I see it, the biggest problem that the GRS has had is a serious lack of loyalty and structure. I have been involved with another club (not here in the upstate but where I grew up) and they have it going great. The GRS has "officers" but from what I can see they don't really serve any purpose other than just having titles. IMO, dues do more than simply pay for things like websites or other things, they also create some club loyalty. Let's say I attend 1 meeting and decide I like it, so I come back for the second one, but it isn't quite as good and there are a lot of new people there and a lot of old ones not, I'm probably not going to come back. Now, throw dues in there. I come to my first meeting and I like it. I sign up and pay my annual, say, $20 fee. Now, the second meeting may not be so great, but I'm still going to come back to the third because I have an invested interest in it. People are going to be more willing to get involved and work in something they have some of their own money invested in. The East Coast Aquarium Society (the club I've been involved in) is located in the Atlantic provinces of Canada and they are not much older than the GRS, however they have structure, dues, and officers who actually have something to do. If you want to look around and get some ideas, their URL is www.eastcoastaquariumsociety.ca It may be worth your while to see what a well established club does and take some ideas from that. They do stuff apart from regular meetings as well. They have annual BBQs in the summer and about once a month they have a local shopping "night" at one of the LFS. We have some great stores around here and if we start really getting involved with them as a group then they might actually start giving us discounts if we have a membership card or something like that. I've actually heard people from outside the club talk about the club, and their biggest complaint is the lack of organization.

I would love to really get heavily involved with this group but I'm hesitant to do so because of the aforementioned lack of structure. I hope some of this is helpful.

hng · 02-18-2008, 11:12 AM

Welcome to TRT and thanks for posting. You've brought up some good points and I'm sure they will be discussed at the March meeting. Hopefully, the "new" club will be better organized and more fulfilling for all members.

Fat Tony · 02-19-2008, 08:23 PM

Ok everyone... anyone... any suggestions?? Wake up and smell the Skimmate!

tdwyatt · 02-29-2008, 10:48 AM

Can we get an agenda posted somewhere for the meeting?

Fat Tony · 02-29-2008, 03:22 PM

I think that can be arranged Tom... i will get with the others about it...

Fat Tony · 02-29-2008, 04:25 PM

That is being worked on Tom. OK Ya'll This is a LAST CALL for all name nominations for the Club. No more nomination will be accepted after March 3rd... so PM me those nominations for names!

tlgreve · 02-29-2008, 05:18 PM

But we will be taking nominations for committee members until the meeting (you can nominate yourself) We don't need a president or other officers with the size we are now, so we are going to have a small 3-4 person committee to help lead us.

Fat Tony · 03-03-2008, 09:25 PM

ok guys... the time is up for submission of name ideas, here are the nominations

These are the names that will be used for voting at the March meeting...

Palmetto Marine Aquarium Club (PMAC)
Greenville Area Marine Aquarium Society (GrAMAS)
Upstate Marine Aquarium Society (UMAS)
Greenville Area Marine Aquarium Club (GAMAC)

there have been several nominations for committee members... we need your nominations! we will be accepting nominations until the day before the meeting...So Let's Get Those Nominations In!! LOL

Fat Tony · 03-05-2008, 05:06 PM

be sure to submit your vote to me or TimmyG or tlgreve before the day of the meeting if you aren't going to make it (via PM)... every vote counts people... since there is no formal membership requirements (yet) all members in the region and those outside of the region that can reasonably make it to meetings (immediate area... Aquawolf, you'd be one of these members, and i hope you can make it to a couple meetings soon!) get's to have a vote...

tdwyatt · 03-15-2008, 02:04 PM

I will want to be invoved with a "steering committee as a member', but cannot take the time to be involved as an officer. I think this may be a good topic for dicussion at the first meeting...