Value of full membership and the club

[mdsalemi]

Regrettably John Hassels Installation tips are available to Full Members only.
Peter

REGRETTABLY?  I don't concur.  With all the information available for free here, one little piece of information, once, can save a lifetime of headaches.  Our "admission fee" for full membership is a drop in the bucket; it is meaningless money compared to the value offered here.

Rather than just look for the XR700 guide for free, Mr kretean should see the value here; sign up & pay, and download that himself and also have access to a lot of other information.  If he's looking to do an electronic ignition upgrade surely there's more work to come...

[hands_aus]

Michael,
As a full member of this wonderful group may I ask did this group have to pay for the Crane installation information?
thanks

[jeffc280sl]

Interesting question.

[bpossel]

Hi Bob,

Of course, the club didnt pay money for the Crane installation information/procedure.  The information in the Technical Manual has been the collective work of many, I believe, mostly full members.  It contains a lot of very valuable information that comes from members with direct experience with these various topics. It is an organized source of information as opposed to having to search the forums for the information one requires.  While a lot of the Technical Manual can be searched and used by non members, some of the "key" topics have been restricted to full members.  It is the full paying members that help to keep this club alive by helping to pay for the clubs expenses.  While the members that maintain this club do not make any money, it takes money to pay for this website, and other full member benefits.  Being a full member has it's benefits.  Hope this helps.
Bob  

[mdsalemi]

Michael,
As a full member of this wonderful group may I ask did this group have to pay for the Crane installation information?
thanks

No, in a word.

However, I personally found, as a full member of this group, Mr. Hassel.  I spoke with him personally (tracked him down and called him) on some issues in the manual.  I then pursued the installation with that manual, and with the assistance of Crane's Tech Support, and ironed out some issues.  When I opted, again as a full member and with the advice of people like Jim Villers and others, to install the Pertronix, I did the same kind of thing.  I have willingly shared all this information in many posts on the subject.

I have done all of this as a full member.

My own opinion is this: if you are "interested" in the W113, and like to lurk about picking up pieces of information here and there to add to your own knowledge, that's great.  However, if you are specifically working on a car, and keep coming back to this group for detailed answers and instructions (a lot of which come about by blood, sweat, tears and money) so you can get your own car together, it isn't a stretch to ask for the $29 (or whatever it is) to become a full member.  PARTICULARLY when some of the information you might require is already posted, categorized, etc.  It isn't a rule, but it is only my opinion.  Nobody has to agree with me, but then again there is a reason why we have a full membership--and that isn't my idea.

[w113dude]

it isn't a stretch to ask for the $29 (or whatever it is) to become a full member.

I have to agree with Michael, I don't think it's issue of the cost of having an instruction page up rather the place where that information can be retrieved. For a Pagoda owner as hobby or otherwise paying $30.00 not a stretch at all.

[Garry]

I also agree with Michael and I find it a bit 'odd' that some on the site have hundreds of posts and I think in one case a thousand+ posts and yet not step up for the sake of $30 and be a member and support the cost of maintaining/hosting the site for all.

[Peter van Es]

I would venture to say that ALL of the information in the Technical Manual is already in the forums, in a variety of posts, in a number of threads. So everyone who's prepared to do their own research can find all the answers in the Forum. But we all know how many times the same question gets asked over and over again, and how few times people have used the Search function effectively before posting a question.

So even though all info is on the forum, somewhere, in the Technical Manual a lot of the "forum noise" has been removed. So the variety of posts arguing, leading to new insights have been removed, leaving only the conclusions. Inaccurate insights are still on the forum, but should have been removed from the Technical Manual.

For 90% of the information we provide, that is even made freely available to everyone in the Technical Manual. However, for the 10% or less of absolute "must have" information, provided by experts such as ja17 and Dr Benz, stuff that - in its own right - will save you 100's of dollars even if you deal with a garage handling your maintenance, we've decided to restrict access to it to Full Members.

Not to make money... but to increase the value that our Full Members receive for their membership. Full Members are what keep this group alive. They provide info for the Technical Manual. They post 80% of the info on the forum. They keep this community alive. We value their contribution and therefore offer full members this in addition to Pagoda World and Pagoda Notes.

The question should not be: "Did the group pay for that info to make it restricted?". The question you should ask yourself is: "why is someone not yet a Full Member of this great community?".

One additional thing: someone whose made hundreds or more posts to the forum is also a great contributor to the community, full member or not.  It's just that if they're not a full member, they miss Pagoda World, Pagoda Notes, and need to search the forum more effectively and wade through pages of posts to retrieve their info.

Peter

[mdsalemi]

...well there are some people that simply will not join anything, at all.

There are others that will never willingly part with a cent, or Euro-Cent, or whatever.  We call them "tight".

There is probably no convincing that kind of person of the true value of full membership.

Then I remember the old Groucho Marx quote:  "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."

[Benz Dr.]

I've belonged to a number of clubs or organisations over the years. I've been President, Vice President, committe member, director and just an oridinary member. This ranges from car clubs, to farm organisations, to military reinactment groups. All of them had good and bad points but the value I got out of them was what I recveived directly or what I put into them.

 This group is not unlike any other organistaion and yet it's quite different. In most cases groups such as ours form or begin in a physical sense. In other words, a bunchh of guys get together in a parking lot and decide to start a club.
This place started on the intenet and as such is held together more by those threads than by so many people who actually know each other face to face. Some of use have done that but relative to the number of people around here, it's still a minority. I will call them and the regular posters on the site, the core group.

If you want to get more people to join the club then you need to show them something. Yes, we have the members area with a few perks but I'm not referring to that. What I mean is what the average person sees when they open the home page. To them, all they see is the web site.
I ask people on the site who might contact me, what they know about the club. Some, in fact many, don't even know there is a club. The activities of the club and the board are too well hidden for the average guy to either get interested or care about what's going on. I'm interested and I care and I still have little idea what the board is doing, when they meet, what decisions they make and why or what our exspenses are. BTW, what are the exspenses to run this site - I can't imagine they are all that much? As I recall, we were looking into a new server and the price options were good but Idon't know what the results were.  It's not vital information but it hepls to give an idea of where membership fees are being spent.

We have two different things here. The web site and the club. Far more attention has been given to the web site than the club in an overall large picture. The web site has become the club and the web site has all the focus, both by the board and the members at large.
There are some club activities which are good, but now that the web site is basically functional on its own, it might be time to work towards enhancing club development. As good as PUB is ( and I've talked to Joe at lenght about this so he knows where I'm coming from and agrees with me ) it's not enough every other year. There have been efforts to go to a more socialy based function in North America which has been met with limited interest. I think so some small degree, we are being hampered by the MBCA. Nothing wrong with that club and that's not where I'm going. What I mean is as soon as someone trys to put a function together people seem to relate it to a MBCA function and tend to loose interst. I suppose some have gone to these functions, didn't like them and figure we would do the same things. I'm not sure but something is holding us back big time and so far I've seen nothing written about it nor any action to address it.
 This is your club that still doesn't have a national convetion, a car show or 113 judging standards after almost 10 years.  Interestingly, a European based social function sold out in weeks, so there IS an interst in that sort of thing if done properly. Congratulations to Cees and Peter for raising the bar over there.

It will be what you guys want it to be. It's time to move forward to the point that the web site becomes meerly a tool for comunication and not the ONLY comunication. It's useful yes, but not as good as a telephone. With the advent of scype ( sp ?) we can now easily talk to each other around the world at little or no cost.

And lastly. There simply isn't enough written or said about the club. We've talked cars to death ( and more ) but not enough about where we want to take things. Eventually, some will leave as many already have after they got their cars sorted out. You have to provide more than car repairs to keep people intersted. If you don't include something that your significat other can go to you won't ever have anything more than what you have right now. Frankly, it's been more than I would of expected given the scope I've seen, but all things fizzle out in time without fresh ideas and something you can take your wife to once a year. After all, she might have been the one who let you buy the car in the first place? Think she might like to have fun in it too?

[Peter van Es]

I've split this off as a separate topic.

On the accounts of the club... for 2009 Alfred and I are working on it as we speak. For last year and previous, they are all out in the open. See here: http://www.sl113.org/wiki/Restricted/BoardReport2009

With regard to the major cost items for the club: it is Pagoda World.

Then with regard to a North American social event, car show, or judging. Dan, this should not be news to you: we've discussed it before. You, or anyone else, is welcome to organise an event. However, the event has to be self funded, by the people that attend it. You can get seed money from the club if needed, but the club has decided that you cannot use club funds to run an event that not the entire membership can benefit from. That's how the Pub is run, and that's how the European Event is run.

So Dan, grab a couple of volunteers, grab US based board members and go organise it.

The membership fees at $30 or €25 are very low. If you want to start running recurring events, and want to spread the financial risk, we could consider to have a new class of membership: event membership, or a different membership rate for North American members. Then the club could organise, on the years that PUB is not there, an event of the kind that you propose, and fund it out of the event memberships.

I would be quite prepared to change the software to handle that kind of membership also, and e.g. charge $100 for an event membership, and add the additional $70 into an event fund. However, you'd still need to find your band of merry volunteers to go and ensure it gets organised.

All I can tell you, as we know from the work behind the scenes in maintaining the site, sending out membership packages, organising Pagoda Notes and Pagoda World, working on the Technical Manual, this work gets done by a small group of volunteers who all lead busy lives. If we do start to charge for an event membership, we must organise events regularly. That's a big commitment as I can tell you, being in the middle of organising the European Event.

So Dan, form a group of volunteers, produce a plan, and put it out here. We can all discuss it, take a vote on it, and then put it into action.

Peter

[RobMarks]

I think an incredible value is attached to the free membership on offer.  Many people see that and the $30 for full membership and Pagoda World is a good sign of support and respect for the Pagoda SL Group.  I can't imagine any pagoda enthusiast questioning the value.

Many thanks to the vast and varield contributors to these pages!

rob

[Benz Dr.]

The last major event I held was in July 2006. We had over 100 people on Sat afternoon and about 45 cars in attendance. One was even a pre war car. I consider that the best show I ever had and those who went to it would tend to agree. There was a CD available of all the cars that afternoon. I'm not sure if anyone has a copy who could send you one.

This event was self funded. I organised it and set it up based roughly on a 190SL Group convention. After holding several events I kind of figured out what works and what doesn't. It was well attended and there was representation from many different clubs from across the region - it worked. However, as you know, it's a ton of work and only myself and Shelley did it. Shelley did far more than I at the time because I still had my regular jobs to do. Since then we both have major health concerns and she has a part time job so I can't expect all that much help as it stands right now.

I offered to hold an event in 2008 and by March or April I had 3 people interested in attending. I can't run something any more than anyone else with no interest. What you are suggesting is that everyone run their own event, which, on a regional level is acceptable. Smaller events can be self funded the same way larger ones could be but the burden would be born by the host.
What I'm suggesting goes far beyond that.

If I might, let me give you an example of how the 190SL Group runs their conventions. This years event is at Traverse City MI sometime in early Sept. I think we will be driving up from my place in a group with 10 - 15 cars if all goes as planned.
We now have the Ontario 190SL Owners Group which was established last year and we had 3 events thoughout the year. One was in April at Toronto, I had one in late June as a car clinic and we had a small convention at Niagara Falls last Sept. We have about 20 members ( non paying ) which are part of the larger organisation. I would call this a regional effort. All events were self funded.

190SL Convention:
I haven't been to one for several years so some things may have changed but every year has a new host and a new location. The host is invited to sit in on the quarterly board meetings for the year leading up to convention to not only get a sense of how things are done but also to give details of their event. The host has to prepare a budget and present this to the board. The whole event is underwritten by the Club with the undestanding that in the event of a wash out the host wouldn't end up out of pocket. There is, and I believe it is expected, that the convention would at least break even. You pay for the convention package; your travel, rooms, meals and other exspenses are on your own.
The convention has several  elements which are required but the host is free to do a number of things as they please. Conmventions are usually 3 -4 days. There is a number of work shops relating to cars, a drving skills afternoon, the car show with banquet with band or DJ that night, a trip to something local, be it a museum or some other local attraction. Sunday morning is the board meeting along with the members meeting. Somewhere in all of this is a local tour of the area in our cars. You are always busy and there's plenty of things for the ladies who come out in good numbers. This has been a proven method and I coppied from this for my last show and it worked for me too.

I suggested a few years ago that the club be set up as regions. There are 13 seats on the board so lets have 13 regions world wide. 1 for Europe, 1 for Great Britton, one for Austrailia, one for Canada and about 6 or 7 for the USA.  If there are some openings available they can be filled by at large regions and can be anywhere in the world. This fairly represents the membership base as it is right now.
Each region may or may not have a board director residing within the region - that would be preferred I'd think but it can just as easily be an interested member as the regional rep. The most a region would be asked to do is to report your activities to the club and hold a regional meeting once a year. This could be in the form of a driving tour, tech meeting, car show, or dinner. It's whatever you want it to be. There are already a number of these meeting taking place right now but   they're not formally organised as part of the club. I think everything is on your own which is fine but a formal orgainisation could help promote the club in many different ways.  It would definately fill up a few pages in Pagoda notes or PW.

Regional hosts would be operating as part of the club - it would be a club effort. As you gain expirience hosting regional events your mneetings will get better and at some point you may want to host a convention should we ever get to that point. My first attempts at holding an event weren't that great but they got better after 20 years of trying. 
Ideas that work can be shared by others and used as a template for future events or meetings.
 PUB has become so succesful that no one wants to do anything else. My conversations with Joe indicate that he's happy with the results but that he would like to go to a more social level of meeting. This can't be done in a two day event as a rule. If you aren't a gear head PUB isn't going to be for you so I'm also responding to a certain level of fairness here.

If every year is too much to have a convention then I suppose every other year is better than nothing. It should be moved from place to place every time which is only fair. The only reason I would consider going to PUB or the 190SL convention is because these events are close enough for me to go. If it was in Texas I wouldn't go. I would expect people from accross the south west and beyond would go. I'm hardly upset that I can't go or that others do. Saying we can't fund or promote a convention because all the paying members wouldn't be able to go is kind of silly. I can't go to Europe. I will tell everyone that's going to have a good time and I wish I could go too but I'm not going to say don't do it because some of us can't go.
  I'd be more bothered if there was no 190 SL convention. It's the highlight of the year and generally something those members look forward to.  If you can't make it that year maybe the next one you can. The idea is to make these things available to as many people as possible over a number of years so that everyone gets a chance to be there.

If anything, it's good that we're talking about these things. 

[Peter van Es]

I offered to hold an event in 2008 and by March or April I had 3 people interested in attending. I can't run something any more than anyone else with no interest.

I suggested a few years ago that the club be set up as regions. There are 13 seats on the board so lets have 13 regions world wide. 1 for Europe, 1 for Great Britton, one for Austrailia, one for Canada and about 6 or 7 for the USA.  If there are some openings available they can be filled by at large regions and can be anywhere in the world.

Dan, these two statements are key:

• if there is no interest, then you can't make it happen
• last time we tried to find a board we couldn't find people willing to volunteer for regional representation

At the board meeting during the last PUB the board discussed this at length with Jim Villers - who is equally familiar with the 190SL Group. The observation, and after discussion, the consensus was that the membership of the Pagoda SL Group  is different from the membership of the 190SL Group. What works there does not necessarily work for the Pagoda SL Group. Why that is is hard to define... perhaps it is because people join the Pagoda SL Group first and foremost through the internet, first as non-paying members, and later as full members. Most of our members are also members of other MB groups, which fill their need for meetings sufficiently, and they look to Pagoda SL Group more for technical info and car expertise.

Having said that, PUB is always successful, and for the European Event we are fully subscribed and have a small waiting list.

In other words, the proof on the pudding is in the eating. If you try to advertise an event, and you get takers, it can be organised. If you don't don't bother. That's why I said: find some volunteers and start organising it. And sure, if the event is self funded, and reasonably planned, then Pagoda SL Group could ensure that if something goes wrong no-one would lose their private funds on it. Although that could be painful too: to book the hotels for the European Event I had to pre-pay over €6000. That's why we insisted people pre-pay a fee when they signed up...

Anyway: the call really is to the membership: who is prepared to step up to the plate and work with the board to organise an event? Some experience required!

Peter

[Benz Dr.]

 OK, I'll put my name in the hat for the Canadian region. I would have no problem finding something to do around here every year. There's all sorts of car related events and places to go though out the season. Why don't you or Cees take the Euro region? You're both doing an event this year and I'm sure it will be promenantly covered later on in PW.
 All we need is about 10 - 12 more around the world and it's done. I'm sure those people who are already sponsoring events this year wouldn't mind having some club backing. Not in monetary funds but more in moral support. I can't even begin to imagine why anyone wouldn't back up this idea. It costs the club nothing - there's nothing to loose and something to gain.

  One major club event per year is what I'm talking about. This year it looks like your event in France is going to be it. It has all the backing of the club and anyone looking at it can see it's a club event just as PUB is considered a club event. Yes, it's self funded as it should be but I think anyone attending probably understands that it's not going to be low end or low key. As I understand it, some are shipping their cars over the pond just so they can drive then on the tour. I can't think of that as small.
 

[Norm]

Since this topic has evolved to this subject, I would like to add that I think region events are a good way for owners to get together and share their collective experiences.   Reading internet messages can be helpful but am I the only one that likes to be able to call a person on the phone and have a conversation with someone that I have actually met in person?  And isn't talking to someone more interesting than using the "search" function   Of course researching a subject on the website at your convenience is a tremendous resource and I am sure that even "good friends" don't want to be called at 2 o'clock in the morning to discuss gear ratios.  But I hope that there is more to sharing a common interest than posting information on the web and going for drives alone.

I'm sure many would like to attend an event where they could gain knowledge and have some fun at the same time but geography being what it is, it just isn't practical to travel significant distances (a relative statement) to meet with other owners.

(Unfortunately, I could not make the PUB event in Ohio last year but I hope to be there in 2011 so that I can meet more of the people that I have become familiar with "online".)

I would also be willing to bet that one of the reasons for the success of PUB is due to the personal relationships that develop when people with a common interest get together.  It isn't just the technical knowledge that makes the event work, it's the people!

I will look forward to discussing this with people that are able to attend our "Pagoda Barbecue" here in Houston on April 24th and with other owners in Europe when we get together for "Glorious Roads In A Pagoda" in September.

As an additional note I would like to thank Peter for offering assistance in helping me get in touch with other owners in and around Texas.

Norm

[IXLR8]

A $30 full-membership is the best single investment I have made regarding my 230SL.

The people here are great and the information is extremely valuable to me.

I haven't met anyone from this group face-to-face, but I feel that I "know" many of the contributors.

I have received great and quick responses to my questions as I try to bring my car back to life after it sat unused in a warehouse for 20 years before I bought it.

They say that the best things in life are free, but I think that you only get what you pay for.