Present: Mike Karnes, Gil Major, Samantha McKinney, Brad Davy, Steve Sides, Jeff Marsuchek, Doug Pilcher, Clark Hymas, Adi Kochav
Absent: Phil Vance and Charles Lewis
Meeting began at 9:01 p.m. EST.
Committees – Gil Major
Most of the committees are formed. Mike is going to inform Tom Wheeler on where we stand on the Sequence Committee. Gil has a correspondence going with Jerry Hailey on the Rules Committee. The focus is currently on forming the Rules Committee.
Curtis Cozier is working on the Sequence Committee. There are currently some issues with committee members not checking sequences that are ready for publication. They must be checked before they are released for contests. More alternate sequences are now being requested, which is where we are running short.
Membership and Marketing Committee – Clark Hymas
There has been two meetings and several correspondences back and forth. Clark has posted the results of the survey in the BOD forum. This committee is in agreement that we need to start with the marketing of IMAC first. IMAC isn’t broke, it just hasn’t been promoted very well over the years. The main way to start promoting is to get the Regional Directors to host Basic Only events and have higher class members participate. This would be a one day contest. Regions could also host Basic boot camps as well.
The committee liked where if a member referred 3 new members, that referring member would receive a one year free membership. Joe Nall is also coming up. One big push is to set up an IMAC Facebook page, which would link to the Regional Facebook pages also. Each region should have a Facebook page and would be managed by the RD’s. Doug mentioned having someone on the Membership and Marketing Committee managing the nationwide IMAC Facebook page. It was also mentioned setting up an Instagram account for members can make posts to it. This would be promoting IMAC through social media.
They would like to see the Redbooks posted up on Flying Giants, if possible. RDs, ARDs, and CDs posting articles on the Flying Giants site, and through a link in the article to draw them back to the IMAC site. Currently, CDs can submit a write-up on their contest when results are posted. There was a discussion of changing the size of the Basic aircraft, a possible handicap in the scores. There was much discussion held on this particular topic. A few are totally against, with most of them in favor.
They also wanted to get approval from the BOD to get a Survey Monkey account setup to send a survey to past and current members. Mike mentioned that AMA would do this for us and the webmaster has an email list of around 5,000 to send surveys to. Survey Monkey is $300 per year. AMA has a marketing company that we would be able to use this to come up with a survey and send it out. Gil has checked into this and the company just said that they would run an ad in the magazine. Gil has received no further correspondence. There is a group meeting with all the SIGS at Toledo with AMA, and Mike might mention this during the meeting. Steve believes that we should approve the setup the Survey Monkey Account for the Membership and Marketing Committee to proceed. Doug believes that the committee should bring the questions to the BOD to see if we have any additional questions or any corrections needed. Clark said they would like to setup a tiered-type survey. Jeff says that there could be a concern with AMA on getting the emails to mass-mail the survey. Clark says that we could give AMA a link to that would tie into the survey. Gil made the motion to give the Membership and Marketing Committee the go ahead with the survey and to fund an account with Survey Monkey and Steve seconds. With one abstained vote, the motion passed.
International Regions – Adi Kochav
Adi received a call from Luiz, with Paraguay. Adi said that he would take to the BOD to see if they would make a Latin American region, which would increase by 120 members. The Latin America region would include the countries of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, etc. It would give individuals more, and provide and introduce IMAC into South America. The most important thing that they want is the RPS from the contests. For this region, he would make it to where they must commit to becoming IMAC members. Doug suggested that if Luiz could bring us 60 or so members, then we could discuss adding this as a region at that time.
Currently, International RPS is not posted on the IMAC website. We can add their contests if someone would turn in the score files to be posted. They can only see their contests. Jeff mentioned that we need to tell the International countries that we would like to post their contest scores immediately. Mike volunteered to post their score files and get their standings posted on their region page. Doug makes a motion to give the International region their RPS standings on the IMAC site and Gil seconds. Motion passes unanimously.
England had questions about dropping some classes in an IMAC contest, for reasons of not having pilots in that class. There would be Basic, Sportsman, and Advanced. Our rules specify that all classes have to be offered, that doesn’t mean that there has to be a pilot in each class.
Adi has been thinking of ways to make IMAC bigger. It would be approachable after the 2018 IMAC Worlds. He believes we should look at the different sport affiliations. Currently, we only have 3-4 members in each country that register as IMAC members. Such as IMAC Israel, they need to affiliate to IMAC United States. There should not be just a few members that are registered members to receive unknowns, etc. This would help fund IMAC United States to be able to push internationally. Mike mentioned that this has been thought about before, but the question is how to implement it. Brad wanted the BOD to think about making a change to the contest standards that for a contest to receive the unknowns, a percentage of pilots must be registered members of IMAC. Doug believes if we have more International members, it would justify allocating funds to the International region to promote IMAC.
2018 Worlds – Steve Sides
Steve received an email from Mexico and he is currently in contact with the person in charge of Mexican IMAC. He was named as the IMAC Mexican representative and we will send an invitation to him. Sweden sent an email for change of address to the Swedish Model Flying Association. No luck from Argentina, but is getting help from the Chilean IMAC. We haven’t got a response back from Australia on the invitation. Gil will reach out to Bones on the Australian team. The only country that has said no is Jamaica.
We currently have 3 judges waiting for BOD approval: Bill Teeter from Canada; Peter Brynard from Australia; and Amelio Mansato from Spain. His bio is posted in the BOD thread for everyone to look at. Bill Teeter teaches the NC judging School with Mike. He has also been the Chief Judge for the NATS the last 2 years. Steve will create a separate thread for the bios of the International Judges.
Steve wants to start posting flags of countries that have said yes on the website. He is going to send emails out to confirmed judges for headshot pictures to post to the Worlds website. Mike wanted copied on the emails because he is working on the Worlds magazine.
Steve has asked Adi to come up with a document on shipping airplanes to the United States. Steve will post it on the website as a bulletin. In 2014, the British team showed up without airplanes cause the airline refused to take them.
IMAC Video – Doug Pilcher
Doug wants to know if the BOD thinks we should plan on moving forward with as a whole. This could be a big way to promote IMAC. He has come up with some new story boards. The BOD believes that this is an excellent idea. Brad mentioned putting this out to the members wanting their video or pictures. Jeff said he is on board helping with this project. Steve will send something out to the World attendees on getting videos/pictures on getting ready for the Worlds. This is for all seven regions. Mike said that this would be great to use at Toledo.
Website – Doug Pilcher
Ty has been working on the Redbook reviews. We currently only have a heading under “Downloads” for “Training Info”. Ty can only post these reviews in the forums. Links to these reviews are on Facebook and other places with a link to a forum on the IMAC website. He has asked the webmaster to add an “Education” tab at the home level, instead of a subtab under “Downloads.” The webmaster wanted BOD approval before creating. Ty would also like to use Live Writer to add more content to it. Doug believes this would add “clicks” to our website that would help get advertisers interested again with added traffic it can create. The education information is buried too deep for members/non-members to find. Doug motions for the webmaster to create a separate tab for “Education” with the Title Bar and include a Live Writer string for education and Gil seconds. Motion passes unanimously.
Other Regional Issues – All RDs
The Southeast just had a judging school at Clover Creek, with an attendance of 13, which tied with Jacksonville for the biggest judging school. They have had 34 people within four schools held. Brad is having Go-To-Meetings for Judging on Wednesday nights from 7:00-8:30 p.m., for 6 weeks from April 5th to May 10th. The sessions are an hour and half long. He is limiting the class size to 20. Gil mentioned to adding it to the schedules in each region to make members aware. Jeff has signed up to participate. Doug said he will link to all regions event schedules. Charles had a one day in South Carolina and it was 6 hours of classroom and 3 hours of practical.
The North Central is thinking about subsidizing the CDs for the first contest for the Basic pilots. North Central has a lot of pilots that don’t plan on leaving the Basic contests. Gil has been offering free Basic entry for a while and he doesn’t know of any that has specifically come for that. The Southeast also puts a Basic pilot with an Unlimited Pilot to answer questions or to help setup plane, etc. One of the South Central Region judging schools has been cancelled due to low attendance. The Northwest Region had their judging school with great attendance.
Meeting adjourned 11:27 p.m. EST.