[Coco] The CoCo Crew Podcast -- Episode 81 is available!

[eric at canales.me]

Republishing this from FB for those not on FB:

Hi. I absolutely loved your discussion on the Glenside Color Computer Club.
I'm the treasurer of the club so I'd like to comment on a few things with
both hats, my personal feelings and my official treasurer's stance.

First, I agree our main mission as a club is to put on CoCoFEST!. Though
officially it's slightly different than that, officially our club is there
to host and promote community around the CoCo. So anything that involves
getting people to do CoCo things is on the table.

That said, I made a post a few days or maybe a week ago now asking for some
guidance and assistance in setting up some long term goals and investments.
The idea is *not* to make a new organization and probably not even a trust,
but to take our current organization and put in on a long term goal, and
start putting money aside to realize that goal. I don't think we need any
special new corporations or anything to do some simple investment in our
future.

As our current membership ages, it's important to start thinking about who
is going to be running the club in the future. If we don't get young people
interested, there won't be anybody left to run the club. What does this
mean?

To me personally, this means our club should be all-inclusive, offer modern
services if they are not offered by the community like Discord and Facebook
pages, and do things to attract new and younger community. Exactly what we
do though will depend on what our members want and what already exists out
there. I think free attendance is part of that.
For free attendance, first, we don't need the attendance fees this year to
cover the show. Second, charged attendance may make strangers to the event
and to the club pass on attending. For example, during our meeting where we
were debating this question, a number those in attendance including myself
could list people who did not come due to the fee. Would they have been
lifelong Club members had they attended? I don't know, but I would hope so!

That said, free attendance may be offered next year, or it may not. We set
the price of attendance yearly.
My personal goal as treasurer (beyond my main duties) is to find a way to
fund our club indefinitely, which means, as you all pointed out on the show
about what our club mission should be, is that my (personal) goal is to
setup the club to run CoCoFEST! indefinitely regardless of attendance
numbers.
Because of this, I felt personally that free attendance is a mistake like
you all seemed to, but it was voted on by our members and so that's what we
get. That's why your membership in the club is so important. You get to
directly influence what it is we do, what our mission is, and how we go
about it. It probably would have only taken 1 or 2 people to sway the
discussion!

Lastly, I'm paraphrasing what one of you said on the show so forgive me if I
misunderstood, but to say that the club is run by long term members that
won't or can't be removed is not accurate at all! The elected officers can
both empower and remove all other directors in the club at any time. That
means the four elected main positions build the rest of the core group that
runs day to day operations. Your membership in our small group directly
impacts who is doing what! It really is a personal club and your (the
reader's) participation heavily guides us!

In fact, we are currently looking for a newsletter editor. if you're a
member even from 2 days ago, you can become the newsletter editor and
influence what everybody in our club reads!
Thank you for the interesting discussion!!

Eric Canales
eric at canales.me
treasurer at glensideccc.com