Hey, Alex, great pics. Can I have one too? By the way, like the shirts. Great stand, you guys.
Colin
Col, those shirts had a lot to do with our winning the prize this year. Not just for their obvious and demonstrated sartorial elegance
but because they gave us a uniform, and made it obvious who the people on the stand were who belonged there.
The pics do show what a great stand we put on this year - by far and away our best ever. But the prize for the MotorEx Best Club Display is only partially about the best static display of vehicles. There are plenty of clubs out there who seem to think like this: "OK. We've got 150m
2 of floor space. The site will only cost $10 per vehicle if we can jam 12 cars in there." That is true, but you wind up with a vehicle display that might as well just be the cars on the perimeter, since you can't walk through it, and often the cars are chained off anyway.
The other crucial mistake that other clubs make is leaving the tumbleweeds to blow through their stand. The secret of success at MotorEx is to have your club members visible, answering questions and assisting the public. We have a roster that we expect our members to adhere to: you get in for free (we arrange tickets for our rostered "staff"), and you are expected to man the stand for about 2.5 hours, then you're free to wander the halls and check out the rest of the show. During your shift, you are there to answer questions about the club and/or the cars, and make the public feel welcome to look at them. This is our 4th year at MotorEx, and we have never chained our vehicles off - having club members around is all the security that is required.
So we've put on a great display of cars and what our club's all about. We've put in some hard work but had a great time planning the stand and putting it together. Hopefully we'll get some new members out of it. We can also find some good uses for the prize-money...
Even though this was a combined effort by many committed club members, I'd like to thank the people who really made this happen:
- John Rap, for managing the project and doing most of the running around to bring it all together. John put in an enormous amount of time and diligence to make this year's event so successful;
- Gary (zulu) and son Ben for providing a lot of the display equipment and material, and assisting with the construction and eventual demolition of the site;
- Geoff_K for his efforts in planning and laying out the stand on paper for us, as well as supplying his car;
- Ted Lowe, for manning the stand most of the weekend, as well as providing all the electrical equipment and setup, and one of the cars - a huge effort;
- Glenn (FC-V8 ), for loaning us his car for the display, less than a week after he finally got it registered, when I'm sure he would much rather have been driving it around all weekend and enjoying it;
- Stewart (mad_ozi_hunter) for letting us use his daily driver for the weekend;
- Fast_Eddie for donating the flooring material;
- Siggy,who helped put the stand together, pull it down again and man it on the Saturday in between;
- Steven Macdonald, who as always came good with the loan of a huge flat-screen TV and video for our presentation;
- everyone who gave their time to man the stand over the weekend. Jeez I hope I haven't forgotten anyone :-/
The sense of common purpose and pride in our club that this event fosters in my mind makes the whole thing so worthwhile. There really hasn't been an event in Sydney to showcase Car Clubs since the demise of the Yennora Woolsheds Show in the 80s, and we are grateful to the organisers of Meguiars MotorEx for the opportunity to participate.
Well done guys.
cheers
RET
[ Edit: I knew I'd miss someone, it's always a risk when you start naming names.... List of thanks updated to include Ed S. ]
