Minutes: 2004 BAOC Annual General Meeting
Stanford University
Sunday, April 4, 2003
The annual meeting of the Bay Area Orienteering Club (BAOC) was called to order by Ian Tidswell at 1:02 pm. A quorum (i.e., more than 15 members) was present.
1. ELECTION OF OFFICERS — Ian Tidswell
Elected unanimously was the proposed slate of officers: Ian Tidswell, President; George Minarik, Treasurer; and Terry Farrah, Secretary. There were no nominations from the floor for these positions.
2. EVENT COORDINATOR — Ian Tidswell
The position of Event Coordinator remains open. The Event Coordinator schedules our meets and locates event directors and course setters. It is a position that can be done on one's own time and at one's own pace. Gary Kraght is willing to mentor an inexperienced Event Coordinator.
3. STATE OF THE CLUB — Ian Tidswell
Ian thanked the Stanford Orienteering Club (president Natasha Gelfand) and co-event director Chuck Spalding for putting on such a good event that day on the Stanford campus. He also thanked all of the club volunteers who participated during the year. Highlights of the year included hosting the US Champs at Fallen Leaf Lake, increasing our contacts with adventure racers, and having a successful rogaine. Our events were of high quality and had generally good attendance.
During 2004, we will be hosting two A-meets, one in June at Tahoe (Gary Kraght event director) and one in the fall at Morgan Territory and Joe Grant (North) which will be the U.S. Long and Short Course Championships (Cheryl Madson event director). We expect to continue our focus on nurturing our relationship with adventure racing. The club finances are stable, although we expect that there will be less income as a result of hosting a national championship event that often has lower attendance than the championships held in 2003. (That is matched by incurring fewer expenses for housing.) It has been some time since our fee structure has been changed, and the issues of club membership fees and meet fees will be discussed this year. We want to have a relatively simple structure, but one that provides good value to our members and participants. Ian stated that we do not want cost to be a deterrent to attendance at our events. While our meet attendance has been increasing, our club membership has been slowly decreasing, and we need a membership fee structure that pays the actual cost of membership (including USOF fees and bulletin costs). The discussions will probably take place at the next two board meetings, and the possibility of forming a committee will be considered.
We continue to seek volunteers, as they are the key to our success. Any level of contribution, large or small, is appreciated. In particular, we need a volunteer for the Event Coordinator position. It was suggested that this position might be changed somewhat (e.g. have a number of people each assume responsibility for a few months each year; have a central coordinator with regional assistants). Interested volunteers should contact Ian.
Ian mentioned that another possible activity for the club this year could be participation at the Outdoor Adventure Sports Expo to be held at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds on August 27-29, 2004. This is the sort of event that might appeal to potential orienteers and we might consider setting a course at the event.
The meeting adjourned at 1:20 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Meg Gerstner
April 7, 2004