Annual Planning Meeting - March 27, 2011
Our annual planning meeting was held on Sunday March 27th at the Yangtze River Restaurant in Littleton, MA. This was a new venue for us and it worked out really well. The food was good, there was plenty of parking and we had our own function room for our meeting. There were 22 people in attendance including new members John and Trish, who recently acquired a TR6!
We proceeded with the election of club officers. Stan offered to continue as Club Director unless anyone else
wanted the job. No one stepped forward so he will remain for one more year. Everyone else was also willing
to continue in their present positions for another year. We do need someone to volunteer to take over
the newsletter if the club wants to continue to have one. We also need club members to submit articles for both
the newsletter (and the website!) since the job of the newsletter editor is to edit and assemble the content,
not to have to create all of it as well. Anyone can volunteer to write an article about an event they have attended
(club or non-club), a repair job that they tackled, the story of how they acquired or restored their car, or anything else
that might be of interest to club members.
We had a great discussion about club events for 2011. Everything should be on the
2011 calendar at this point. If I've missed anything, please let me know.
On the schedule again this year are the Southern New Hampshire Tour, the Cape Ann Tour, the Lobster Tour and
the Fall Foliage Tour. A big thanks goes to the club members who volunteered again this year to organize these events:
John, Alex and Pam, Tom and Wendy, and Bob and Linda. We also have a Faneuil Hall event planned. Space is limited for that
event so you need to reserve your spot in advance.
Tim Piper and John Cyganowski were unable to attend the planning meeting but they have volunteered again this year to organize our Day of Triumph event. This is a big event so we thank them for volunteering to take this on again. We appreciate all of the volunteers who have helped with this event in the past and hope that we can count on many of our club members to do so again this year. In addition to the planning and organizing activities we will also need volunteers on the day of the event. Work will begin soon so if you are willing to help please contact Tim or John or Stan Foster.
Some new events were added to the calendar this year. For several years, Ned Sparrow along with a few others have attended the vintage car racing events at Lime Rock in early September. Ned has volunteered to co-ordinate a group outing this year to attend on the Saturday. More information can be found in the calendar entry for the event. Bob Lang proposed a Covered Bridge Tour in early October and suggested moving the Foliage Tour to later in the month so that the foliage might be closer to peak.
Speaking of the calendar, we're now using Google Calendar. It offers multiple views (Week, Month, Agenda) and allows printing up to a year's worth of events at a time. We actually have three calendars merged into one:
- Club Events, shown in British Racing Green
- Other Events of Interest, shown in Topaz for events sponsored by other clubs that might be of interest to our members
- Holiday calendar, shown in Magenta, to help us schedule around holidays
By default, events from all three calendars are displayed. If you want to exclude any of the calendars (useful when printing a list of events) click on the little triangle next to the "Agenda" tab and select only those calendars whose events you want to see. To print out a list of events, click on the Agenda tab and then click on the little printer icon (next to the word "Print") to bring up a print preview window. Select a date range and check the box to "Print Descriptions" if you want more than just the title, date and location for each event. Unfortunately the color coding does not carry over when printing but the calendar name is displayed for each event.
Thank you to everyone who attended the planning meeting. Everybody seems especially eager this year to go on that first drive, not too surprising considering the winter we have had. Thanks for sharing your ideas to make 2011 another great year for our club. So take a look at our new calendar and check out all of the events planned for 2011!