Thread: The inevitable question: Where's next year?

I am not a fan of the meal tickets in the sense of that if you do not pay you can not eat eventhough the donations are needed. Lets call it a smoother way of charging. When Lou and I promoted the Picnic we made it very clear that donations where needed and that the donations where key in covering costs. In a hidden way yes we are charging but, if not promoted and pushed hard it's sad to say people will scam the sysytem. I am not syaing that this was not pushed for Atlanta I am just stating what worked for Lou and I.

It is very unfortunate that anyone would eat and not pony up a few bones towards the cause. That is just wrong. Hopefully next year we will not have this issue.

Unfortunately your always going to have a small group of individuals who are cheap and don't pay and eat for free. I guess I see things differently. Its hard for me to ask people money for a hamburger and hot dog after they donated money or raffle items, bought multiple t-shirts or spent a decent amount of money traveling to the picnic to show there car or just be apart of the festivities. I just want everyone to sit down, relax and enjoy themselves.

100 people can show up to the picnic and only 50 people may purchase a ticket to eat. Again I guess it all depends on the circumstance. It worked in our benfit last year and believe we ended up with more then if we charged for picnic tickets. I understand every situation is different and it should be up to the person who is hosting the picnic to make that call.

Here's where I'm a bit confused and maybe could be enlighten;
If we were able to break even this year and a few people got to eat for free, then whats the issue?

Agreed Nelson Ledges did make things much easier for us, but keep in mind we weren't able to benefit from roadcourse sales because NL collected all the payments, so this had no effect on covering the picnic or anything else convention related.

I could be wrong but I believe the days of hosting a convention centered around a 10k roadcourse are over, especially if we barely break even.

I wouldn't go as far to say the days are over. If there is no other choice but to have the convention in a location that has a costly road course rental I'd think that we would at least try it. But I'm not sure if it would be by choice unless all the lines came together and everything worked as one

Yeah, and maybe it's possible to piggyback on one of these third party track days..

I think that expensive track days are overkill for our community. Yes they can be pulled off as Joe has shown us but, I think it brings a lot of unwanted stress on the organizer. Keep in mind the organizer signs a contract and is on the hook for a lot of money. Yes big fancy top dollar courses are a blast to experience as a car guy but, for a community like ours I think it's way to risky. I know I would not want to put myself in that position. Joe is a very brave man and I give him props for pulling it off.

There are a lot of things to take into consideration when setting up a big event like our National Convention.

No discredit, he had a $100 voucher that went in the raffle and threw us $100 towards the picnic



The only issue is that I was sweating until the rafflemania broke out at the picnic. Up until that point I was upside down on costs, and was looking at needing an extra $500 that had to pay for drag racing. Remember we originally were running on a day the track was already open. They only opened up Saturday for us the way it ended up with the weather, and I had to cough up extra dough to pull that off.



I made contact with someone today who would be willing to split cost with us to run VIR in 2015, something we should strongly consider. Drag racing on 1/4 is only an hour away in North Carolina. An attractive road course is as important to keeping the convention going as a drag racing event is. Consider how you drag racers wopuld have felt this year if we had not been able to get that time in Saturday afternoon. You would certainly have still had a lot of fun, but you would have had an empty place inside.

We must not leave those who make the commitment and the trip with an empty feeling

Just a few random thoughts.

Going forward, I think we should have contingencies in place if the weather is bad. It all worked it self out this year, with the help of Joemaican voo-doo magic, but we may not always be as fortunate. Both the picnic and, as we found out this year, the drag day can be drastically effected by inclimate weather. If bad weather happens, we should have a plan b in place ahead of time. Participants should be aware that things could be cancelled all together and they may not get their money back, as well. This is one of the big reasons "pay at the gate" type of events are very appealing. I think purchasing the picnic food and supplies, the day before, is also a good strategy. Overall, I think we're on the right track, no pun intended. I'm not trying to be a debbie-downer. I just think we need to be smart about it and fine tune it a little, so no one gets burned.

Joe, the $500 was in addition to the money they already had for Friday, right? If so, you think they would have cut us a break there.

No, we had an agreement to pay $1000 on Friday morning to have our own "event" from 12-5 pm, prior to an already scheduled event from 6-11 pm. Normally it is $2500 for a private event and there is a 10 car limit. Unknown to most before now, I was on the phone working my magic all day Friday to get us in at all. The track could just as easily have told us no thanks. Hence my "offering" additional money to be sure drag racing happened. I'm not a drag racer and wasn't even able to run my car at all due to engine issues. Like I said previously, it's critically important that folks who make the trek get to have their time on track.