As a member, I’d like to know what is happening at Board meetings, so I think Lead could be used for that. I also think events like the bike swap, Big Ride, trail days, and adopt-a-road could go in the Lead category too, although maybe they would go in a General category instead? Originally I thought of the Lead category as anything that shows leadership of the club and its members in the community and/or the province.
I think the board should use a combination of “Announcments and FAQ” and Member Lounge categories for engaging with the membership.
I think rides like the big ride belong in Ride because a lot of the discussion about such events covers details about the riding itself that could be used by anyone doing a similar on their own or in smaller groups.
Even if we get the Trails Committees to post trail days, there just aren’t enough events to justify a separate category.
Without volunteerism and leadership, the club wouldn’t exist in its current form. I think we want maximum visibility for lead events and activities. People can mute an entire lead category and ignore all lead discussions. I think it is best to promote and discuss lead in context rather than splitting it out.
A question to pose to the board and its membership: Is ‘Ride Race Lead’ still representative of our values? Do we need to drop it or should we re-enforce it.
I can think of lots of things to put in the lead category, as mentioned in other threads, I don’t necessarily understand the resistance here.
I like Steve’s idea of having more sub-categories and based on other discussions, that seems to be a well liked suggestion. For Lead, I think it could include: Board Meetings, Advocacy, Club and Community Events (not ride or race related), OCA News, and Volunteer Recognition (basically a place recognizing people in the club who are exemplary leaders).
My reservation is one I have about having lots of subforums in a forum in general. I’ve found myself on more than a few occasions searching for a particular thread that I know exists, but can’t for the life of me figure out where it resides. This is far less of an issue where categories are clearly delineated. The Lead category seems like a problematic one in that it is too broad and general and I expect a lot of threads in it would also just as easily fit into another category. This can be problematic if you’re searching for a specific thread, like me, but what if I as a user am really interested in Bikepacking, so have tracking enable for that category so I stay notified of any posts in it, but then someone posts something related to bikepacking in the Lead category (I dunno, say “How can WCC provide more value to the bikepacking community?”). They might very well miss the topic entirely even though they are someone you’d probably want to contribute.
My personal opinion is that categories should be used sparingly and only added where it’s demonstrated that the volume of threads is too high for a single category or where there is a very clear delineation between topics.
Working in boards and with boards in the past, I have always liked the transparancy of what topics and decisons were made to “lead the company” or in this case “club”. The business of the board is essentially the business of the club and what decisions are made there affect the operation and services provided to all members. I think this forum could mimic or provide a quarterly letter to members bring us up to speed on business of the club. Maybe not so much in terms of financials but more around what are discussions that are ongoing and where we are in the annual running of this club…are we meeting our obligations? How is our community work going?? Etc etc…
So, yes I am in strong agreement to keep this Lead Category, esspecially in this time where people want to feel more part of the club when we can’t share wheels on the street…
We could take advantage of the polling capability in this area to capture feedback. A little preamble to describe it would provide good context:
Do you want the Lead Category to stay?
Do you want it to die because its not relavent to you?
Yes @kspangler my plan is for this to include more stuff about what is going on with the Management of the Club. I think the Club Members would be in favour of this and it seems to perfect use for the Lead category under our Ride, Race, Lead theme.
