This is going to be a SIG event. Now I just need to know what that entails. I'll sign up for PCA.

My main focus is going to be getting the insurance in place so I can reserve the AX space. I hope it's still available.

Mark,
You are going to need to get the local PCA region involved as soon as possible. they have to sponsor the event for you.

I'm in contact with the Redwood Region Head. I've also signed up and paid my dues online last night, so I'm just waiting for my acceptance.

Great. Now we need the location. Charlie is trying to find his way here as we type.

He will have more detail.

I did find my way, with your help. I have no details...yet.

I need to know everything...

I know the Neidel's. They are 914 people. Are they involved in the SIG event?


BTW, am I supposed to click the "Add This" button to post? That seems weird...

[quote name='chuxter' date='Feb 15 2007, 06:24 PM' post='863558']

Mark, I think you are planning to have 2 competitive events...an AX and a Car Show. Is that right?

One of the perks of organizing a SIG event is that PCA offers you a subsidy if you follow a few simple rules. One of the rules is that there be competitive events. If you have 2 events, I think the subsidy is $250. For 3 events, it's $300. I am not sure WHY PCA wants competitive events...it's always been that way.

SO, my suggestion is to add one simple event, such as a Tech Quiz and get more money...

Mark...

I located an old article I wrote for the RegionFocus magazine back in 2001 (I think...it was Volume 17, #4). I tried to attach it, but for some reason, I was not permitted to do this (it was a .doc file). I'll try to send it to you via Clay or perhaps you could send me your e-mail address?

Charlie,
IPB Is weird. It only allows uploads of pictures. IF you want to turn it into a screen shot, you can post it as a .jpg file.

Or just copy and paste it.

Or even better, post a link to it.

Invision Power Board? Is that the foundation of this site?

It's BIG. Paste NOT!

Here is a link: http://www.here-ugo.com/How To Organize a Successful Register Event.doc
Hope it works...

Charlie,

The file is no bueno.... The encoding is completely screwed up. E-mail it to me at clayjr@perrinefamily.org and I will get it on a webpage where it can be viewed.

Sorry, guys, I wasn't getting my automatic updates that this thread was updated.

Consider a tech quiz included. So there will be three contests.

I'm still unclear on the order of operations here. I'd like to get the AX cemented ASAP. But I need to know the insurance info in order to do that.

Here's Charlie's Doc......

=====================================================
How to Organize a Successful Register Event
By Charlie Davis 914 and 914/6 Advocate–Maverick Region

We, the 914 Special Interest Group, have organized several successful events. Our events are called “Rambles”, and are in effect mini-Parades or Multi-event Weekends and are typically 3-4 days in length. Ramble schedules include technical seminars; a car show (show-&-shine/concours); rally; tour; technical quiz; and banquet/meals. We also try to have a “formal” photo session in the schedule, although this is not always possible. These pictures involve many
(sometimes all) of the cars and their owners. We use the pictures as the lead-in picture for our Panorama articles,
plus we put them up on our PCA web site (click on the small picture and get the huge, high-resolution image) for
members to use.

These events are well planned and therefore take a lot of time to organize. We usually start about six months in
advance of the scheduled date. We try to announce details and start accepting registrations about three months in
advance. It takes more than one person to do these, so we delegate jobs to several people (usually 5 – 10 members)
so that the workload is manageable. We have used both face-to-face committee meetings and e-mail to organize our
Rambles. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but both can work.



How to Select an Event Site

We believe that it’s important to move these events around. It’s easier to have a fixed location, as much of the planning is the same from year to year. But it’s much more interesting and enjoyable to have some variation in venues. We try to please the majority of our members, but there are trade-offs. Some owners prefer rural scenery and country roads while others would sacrifice a rustic atmosphere for urban amenities.

We also move the events around because our experience is that a few members will travel 700-800 miles to an
event, but not much further. Most entrants live less than 300 miles away from events that they attend. After a
member has experienced an event and likes it, it’s easier to get them to drive a long distance. This approach helps us
attract new active members to the 914 Register.



How to Select a Hotel

Select a hotel that can comfortably host your group. If you anticipate a 20 room requirement, a 2000 room giant will not be as interested in having you as much as a 50 room hotel will. Also, a 50-room hotel will have small but adequate size meeting rooms, whereas the big hotel will have rooms that are simply too large for your group. It’s just easier to get concessions with a hotel that is the right size. If you use the hotel for your banquet, that is also a plus, because they will give you better room rates. Your entire event revolves around the hotel, and its services should be viewed as a “package” deal. Don’t dismiss the many Bed & Breakfast Lodges – they can be very enjoyable. After about 10 years, we plan to revisit some of the old venues.




How to Select a Place for a Banquet or Meals

As I mentioned above, plan to have your big banquet at the hotel if they have banquet facilities. Other meals can be served anywhere. Always check out the food personally before you make a decision. Go undercover – tell them afterwards who you are. Absolutely get the menu in writing and also the number of expected meals. Finalize the plate count 2-3 days in advance. Most restaurants will automatically plan for about 5% more than you tell them. Ask them if this is their policy. Get it in writing. Define how they will do the meal accounting. Some restaurants count plates, others give you tickets. Be sure that you understand the rules! Understand how the hotel computes tax
and gratuity. The proper way to do this is to compute the tax and gratuity separately (i.e., don’t include either one in the other), but some restaurants like to compute the gratuity with the tax included. We like to have the banquet be a semiformal dinner, but not necessarily a sitdown meal. We often choose to have a buffet, as this gives more flexibility for everyone. Ask about their alcohol policy. Some restaurants cannot serve alcoholic drinks. Some will allow you to bring in your own liquor, but check the local laws about this, since you could be liable in case of an accident. It’s usually best to allow individual members to bring their own alcohol and not have the organizers do it. If the hotel serves alcohol, be sure that you understand how the restaurant prices drinks. Some include the cost of the bartender into the drink prices. Others will charge you for the workers. It is nice to know about this in advance! Remember, PCA’s alcohol policy always applies. The availability of alcohol at any PCA event is only permitted after moving car events are completed for the day.




How to Price the Event

Although it seems obvious, it’s really important to understand all the costs before you decide on an event fee. We always seem to have a few surprises, so we pad the fee with a 5% to 10% “fudge” factor to cover these surprises.
Any monies remaining can be donated to charity or used as a start-up budget for your event the following year.
Don’t have a “formal” policy of component pricing (where entrants can pick and choose which events they enter
and which meals they attend). Make all the entrants pay the same fee. There will always be a few exceptions, but
handle these privately and informally. Having a fixed fee makes it much easier and encourages entrants to participate
more fully. So, what should an event fee include? I’d suggest the following:

• Cost of Meeting Rooms
• Cost of all Group Meals
• Cost of Workers for Bar (even though some members will not drink)
• Cost of Trophies (we usually spend about $5 each on trophies, then charge each entrant a pro rata fee for trophies, which is usually $2 to $4 per person)
• Administrative Fee (usually $5 to $10 is about right)
• Cost of T-shirts
• Small event fees (even if they don’t participate in all events)
• 10% Fudge Factor

An exception to the event fees is an AX or DE event that can be expensive. For these, we insert a separate event cost if the entrant chooses to participate. Administrative fees are for telephone calls, mileage for the organizers (especially for checking out hotels and restaurants, plus designing tours and rallies), printing costs (event flyers, tech
quiz, registration forms, information sheets, etc), and advertising costs.




How to Advertise the Event

If you don’t have a web site, get one! It’s invaluable for promoting these events. We have a nice web site and do most of our advertising there. We also post little blurbs on other web sites in the Porsche community, giving a link to our on-line ad pages. Get a few members to chat about the upcoming event on one of the lists...it really helps.

Identify key members, personally call them about the event, and ask them to spread the word. This works especially
well for small sub-groups that are remote from the organizers. Some years when the event is in a big urban area, we print up flyers and distribute them to local stores who deal with 914s. We also create print ads (3 sizes: 1/4 page, 1/2 page, and full page) and distribute them to Region Newsletter Editors and ask that they insert them for the two months preceding the event. Andrew Jones, PCA Newsletter Chair has a list of all the Editors and can take your ads and send them for you. We have not used Panorama, but this can be another place to advertise. We always include event T-shirts in the event fee. They are great advertising! Make them interesting so that they are coveted and worn.




How to Get Sponsors to Support Your Event

Sponsors want exposure. A quid pro quo is expected for their support of your event, and we provide our sponsors
with free advertising and the opportunity to be seen and heard at our event. We list all sponsors on the web site. We
mention them as we distribute the door prizes. Moreover, we also give the “major” sponsors a nice thank you plaque after the event.




What Resources are Available from PCA

When we started the 914 Special Interest Group, our incentive for doing so was to obtain liability insurance for things like rallies, autocrosses, tours, etc. In our opinion, this is the primary benefit of organizing under the PCA banner, but certainly not the only one. PCA offers a financial incentive, similar to the Multi Event Subsidy. It’s called the Register Subsidy and is a $250 or $300 stipend from PCA for organizing special interest group events. Contact your Zone Representative or John Straub. Either of them can help you submit the form. Another benefit is free advertising in Panorama and regional newsletters. Based upon budgetary considerations and the size of your event, the PCA Technical Committee will pay their model-specific experts to go to your event and conduct seminars.
Lastly, your Register can create a web site and PCA will host it free, which is great for communicating with your
members and advertising your events.




Registration

It’s best to select a very organized person to handle registration. If you decide to give T-shirts, it’s important to include
shirt sizes in the registration data. We log all data on spreadsheets to maintain accurate headcounts as registration progresses. Ensure you obtain USPS, email addresses, and phone numbers from your entrants. All of this data will help you in future years – so create a database. We intentionally don’t limit attendance to PCA members. We accept anyone with a 914 (or a picture of one). This has resulted in some new PCA members. Be friendly and helpful with registrants.

First impressions are lasting ones! Remember that increasingly, there are other options than PCA, especially for
the older models. Your registration workers are on the front lines, so select them with that in mind.

For our Rambles, members know they can’t attend without paying in advance. Demand payment at time of registration. For this reason, we ask for the registration forms to be mailed with a check. Ask the hotel for a room or common area where you can set up registration. If the room is lockable, that’s a plus. The most important task is to get everyone to sign the insurance waver. Do it first.

We set out the T-shirts in same-size stacks in order to speed up the process of distributing them.

Don’t leave registration open all the time. The people working there need time to enjoy the event.




How to Organize a Good Technical Session

First and foremost: locate one or more experts. Start with the member of the PCA Technical Committee who specializes in your car model. These guys are excellent, enthusiastic, and are available to conduct seminars at your event, based upon a judgment call by the Tech Committee Chairman. Plan in advance to schedule them. The scope of your event and its impact on a particular model community will play a large part in ultimately getting your expert to your event. The Tech Committee Chairman will always do his best to accommodate you. But there are many other experts too. Some have independent businesses and will come to your event and chair seminars in their field of expertise.

We usually have several (2-4) seminars at our events, on a range of subjects. These seminars are the glue that holds
the extended weekend together. Don’t limit them to car technical subjects. Do “how to” seminars on autocrossing,
concours, rally, etc.

Get a white board or flip-chart on an easel. Some speakers bring slide shows or PowerPoint presentations, so you
may need to supply some equipment. We have had success negotiating with the hotels to supply some of this (for
free). Big screens and associated equipment are difficult to pack in most Porsches and limited by the airlines!

Encourage your speakers to supply handouts to the attendees. Sometimes, they will also have other goodies to give
away, such as CDROMs full of data.




Car Show

The car show can be a simple wash it/show it affair or a competitive concours. We started with just a simple car
show, but are slowly adding some serious classes. We held a seminar in 2002 about what a serious concours competition was and why any sane person would ever prepare for one. The car show can be on a parking lot or a grassy area. I’d suggest that if your Register has several models (ours does) that you organize the cars by type or class of competition. It also helps if you supply info sheets (to be placed on the car dash) that clearly identify the class. We like to use different color paper for this purpose. We encourage everybody to enter and expect 100% participation. We have a few “funny” classes, such as the popular “Dirtiest Engine Bay” and “Driven Hard and Put Away Wet” classes that relax everyone. Make the car show fun for 95% and anal retentive for 5%.

We allow every entrant to judge the cars informally. They take this quite seriously. We have also started inviting
experienced, qualified people to judge the seriously prepared cars.

Ask the hotel to supply old towels, so that your members don’t “borrow” the nice towels in their rooms to dry off their cars. I’ve never had one refuse this request.




Rally

The rally may be the most difficult event to organize. It is also the most dangerous, so don’t get sloppy with a rally. It’s
essential that your rally-master actually drives to the venue in order to design a good one. As a general rule, the rally-master will have to explore the area roads to select an appropriate course and then drive the course 10 times to
get it reasonably error free. Thus, if you want a short, 30 mile rally and the rally-master lives 200 miles away from the
area, he or she will have to drive at least 700 miles. My advice is to keep rallies short and simple.

There are many different types of rallies. Any of them can be good, but be careful to design them safely. Avoid “Hare and Hound” types that reward fast driving: they are fun but very dangerous. I suggest that you design a rally to reward accurate driving, not fast driving.

Put in some observation tasks. Add a puzzle or two. I dislike “trap” rallies, because they invariably succeed in getting the entrants off course. A good rally-master can loop a trap rally to capture the lost cars without their knowing it is happening, but this is very difficult and takes a lot of time. Not recommended. Our experience is that a short TSD rally
is very well received if you keep it simple.




Tour

A tour is easier to design than a rally. It’s very much like a rally, especially since it can also be dangerous. Discourage
high speeds. Select a tour leader who is mature and stable. The end car in a tour train will experience the “accordion”
effect (his/her speed will vary from slow-to- fast), even when the leader is driving a constant speed. So it’s good to select a “caboose” who is also mature, understands the “accordion” effect, and knows how to reduce its effects.

I suggest that all cars have a set of tour notes that can serve to keep them on the route. If somebody gets delayed or
lost, these tour notes can save the tour for them. If your tour is large, it is especially difficult to keep the “train” together and to suppress the “accordion” effect. We like to split the group up into several 10-car sub-tours to simplify control.




Tech Quiz

There are many kinds of technical quizzes possible – including identifying actual parts, identifying pictures of parts; answering questions on history or technical subjects; solving problems; or some combination of the above. Try to keep the quiz entertaining and educational. Don’t make it too long…20-25 questions are enough.




Banquet

We avoid having a head table and formality at our banquets. We make a few announcements, but, mostly, we award
trophies for the competitive events and distribute door prizes. We give nice trophies (but not necessarily expensive ones) for the competitive events. Usually, a member makes the trophies, rather than buying them from a commercial source. That makes them more personal as well as inexpensive. We have been quite successful in receiving support from our sponsors in the form of door prizes.

We have several methods of disbursing these items. Our favorite is to give a few (~5) door prize tickets to each entrant, and then sell more of them. We put an upper limit (~25) on how many anyone can buy. Then we allow entrants to bid on door prizes by putting their tickets in a bucket associated with the prize. This approach ensures that nobody gets something they can’t use or don’t want. And it’s fast. If you have several very expensive prizes (over $1000), you might consider putting them in a “silent auction”. This will generate lots of money, which can be used as
the seed money for the succeeding year or can be donated to a charity. The winning member will probably still get a bargain.




How to Write an Event Article for Panorama

Some of our best advertising has been our yearly Panorama article. We have been very fortunate in that we have been able to select from the work of several volunteers who have written their version of the Ramble. We spend a lot of time editing the article before submitting it to Betty Jo Turner. It needs to be upbeat and expositive! Find a good editor to help you. Ask several people to proof it.

Any article on your event should be accompanied by great photos. We take lots of pictures with smiling faces and
select a few to compliment the prose. Betty Jo Turner prefers digital photos in TIFF files rather than JPEG files. She can scan your 35mm slides and will return them after publication. Positives work better than negatives. BJT can scan prints, but slides are best.

We always do a suggested layout for Panorama. Show everything the way you want it to look. Be sure to credit photographers. For a big spread, Betty Jo likes to use one color photo on the first page or a double page photo if the aspect ratios are appropriate. All the other photos will probably be in black and white. The resolution on some color photos is degraded upon conversion to B&W, so review them before submission. We go ahead and suggest captions for the pictures. Then turn it over to Betty Jo. If you have submitted a good article with worthwhile pictures, it will probably be used. If she doesn’t use it, don’t get mad or discouraged. Space in Panorama can be at premium during certain months of the year. Just do it again the next year...only better.

Wow, thanks Clay!

Do you need a tech quiz? I have a number of them that were written for the MUSR in the past, and no one out there would have seen them. I even have the one that made Jon Lowe call me a "Sadistic Son of a Bitch".


If you don't want mine, I am sure you could get DD to write one.

I am hoping to schedule my business trip so that I can be there, but I won't know in advance. Any problem with last minute entries?

I'll use any tech quiz you can give me. One less thing for me to think about.

Oh and no problem with last minute entries.

Charlie is trying to get PCA to send him out there for the event. I may be able to go with him if I am not already coming for business.

If I am there, I will take care of the tech quiz, including the delivery. But DD won't be able to play, as he has already taken it.