David Santistevan
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2011
- Messages
- 1,325
First off these are just some of my personal thoughts.
Over the past 5 years, I have had the privilege of working with NAMBA at all levels. From the district level to the National level, I have helped in most aspects of the NAMBA operations.
I really wanted to share some thoughts I have had about NAMBA and to a large degree IMPBA, as they are both subject to the same types of challenges. Right now our hobby is facing some challenges, but I do believe that most of them are solvable with the right efforts and resources. We have some pretty impressive resources at our disposal in the aggregate as a group and we just need to leverage those resources in a focused way.
Over the past five years we have made some awesome changes to help the organization move forward. The efforts for our online presence have paid big dividends and we are really in our infancy with those efforts. Quite honestly, I believe the future of the organization depends on it, as we must recruit new, young members to keep us viable. This is where young people are getting their view of the world, so if we hope to attract them we have to go where they go.
When I started in model boating back in the late 1970s, model boating was growing at a very rapid rate. I could go into my local hobby store (where I saw my first model boat) and see and buy them. I could get fuel, props, the hull and engines all from the local store. Over the years the hobby has become much more diverse in the type of hulls and power plants, plus there are an infinite combination of them. For a new boater it is a daunting task to figure out what to buy and where to buy it, as the hobby stores cannot possibly carry so many different items where the volume for any one is so little.
Unfortunately, technology has made us an instant gratification society, so there are few builders anymore and a lot of folks want to take things out of the box and use them. While I don’t think this is bad, we need to recognize that this is a fact of life now. I think we need to consider this in trying to attract new boaters. This was so completely obvious when the ARF models made their way into the hobby stores. I had always been very interested in planes but never had any desire to build one. After the ARF revolution, I jumped in with both feet.
NAMBA as an organization also needs to change and evolve. We have been trying to do things the way we have always done them, with a focus on the very near term results. We have allowed the President of NAMBA to become a referee, where he should be the long term visionary of the organization. The three officers together should be working on the future of NAMBA and finding ways to increase the value of services NAMBA provides to its members. The Board of Directors that is made up of the officers and the District Directors should be the managing element of the day-to-day racing, dealing with conflicts and issues arising from the districts. Only in the most severe or serious situations should the President be involved in situations arising out of the districts. The NAMBA officers do not know all the people and nuances of situations in each district, therefore the District Directors need to be the primary face of NAMBA for these issues.
So here is my recipe for where we go from here:
1) We need to restructure the responsibilities of the officers so that the President and Vice President’s responsibilities are to move the organization forward. This includes recruiting new membership, determining the services that NAMBA needs to offer to its members, evaluating new ideas and evaluating and assessing NAMBA’s value to its members.
2) District Directors need to be a much more organized group managing the day-to-day conflict of the organization. They should talk regularly on a to discuss what is going on in the districts and share ideas of how things are being done and how problems are being handled.
3) NAMBA needs to formalize its safety program. Each district must appoint or elect a safety officer who is charged with making sure that the NAMBA safety rules are followed. Our national Safety Chairman must also coordinate and hold regular con calls with the district safety officers to keep everyone on the same page as to ESTABLISH A CONSISTENT safety policy and procedures across all districts. This is paramount to making sure we can control our insurance costs and keep and acquire new ponds.
4) NAMBA needs to establish a Race CD development and support program. This will allow us to develop a pool of race CDs that will be able provide a consistent, competent calling of races and a program to mentor and develop new Race CDs. The result of this effort will be a pool of available scored CDs on their abilities to handle races of various sizes and complexity. I can see this group being very important in interpreting and applying rules consistently across all districts.
5) The NAMBA Nationals Event needs some real help. I think the NATS are one of the most impressive things NAMBA does for its membership. NAMBA needs to form a Nationals Committee that will handle the administration and production of the NAMBA Nationals. This will allow us to have a consistent offering where resources such as sponsors, activities, and registration are identified and managed to relieve the local clubs and districts of those hardships in putting on the event. Now clubs and districts may be much more inclined to sponsor an event knowing that a lot of planning and preparation are already done. Contracts with vendors can be negotiated for years in advance with better guarantee of the consistency of representation for the vendor and support for NAMBA. The costs of producing the events will significantly drop as we formalize and make processes more efficient. An experienced nationals team will be much better equipped to negotiate for accommodations, food and amenities. In the end we will have a much richer and consistent offering wherever the NAMBA Nationals go.
6) We need to work with our vendors/providers to come up with standard out-of-the-box offerings. NAMBA needs a website where we can advertise our vendor and their offering to our members. We just need to get folks into the hobby with their first boat. Once they are there then they are engaged and can determine what other interests they may have.
7) We need to advertise. We are invisible to the world a lot of times. We are not really represented in the hobby store and in most cases we are not where folks can see how much fun this hobby is. I believe that we need to go to car racing events and set up kiosks to showcase the boats and talk with car guys about boating. This is a kindred sport with the same type of mechanical and competitive glitter. Like all organizations, the car guys often times get tired of the politics of their group and may look for other ways to express their competitive spirits. We need a solid online advertising campaign using all the social media tools at our disposal. Remember that with a single boat I can reach three thousand people interested in model boating today.
8) Lastly, and probably the most contentious of the ideas, is that NAMBA and IMPBA need to work together. I know there are long standing cultural differences between the organizations but in reality it’s not that complicated. I have raced IMPBA and I really did not have any trouble adapting to their rules. In fact, a lot of D3 runs in a very hybrid way of running races. I have raced all over the country and it’s not all that different. NAMBA is currently around 1500 members and I believe that IMPBA is somewhere around 1000 members. By working together, we are a group of 2500 members and have a much bigger group when negotiating insurance contracts and providing services to our members.
JMHO
Happy Thanksgiving
Over the past 5 years, I have had the privilege of working with NAMBA at all levels. From the district level to the National level, I have helped in most aspects of the NAMBA operations.
I really wanted to share some thoughts I have had about NAMBA and to a large degree IMPBA, as they are both subject to the same types of challenges. Right now our hobby is facing some challenges, but I do believe that most of them are solvable with the right efforts and resources. We have some pretty impressive resources at our disposal in the aggregate as a group and we just need to leverage those resources in a focused way.
Over the past five years we have made some awesome changes to help the organization move forward. The efforts for our online presence have paid big dividends and we are really in our infancy with those efforts. Quite honestly, I believe the future of the organization depends on it, as we must recruit new, young members to keep us viable. This is where young people are getting their view of the world, so if we hope to attract them we have to go where they go.
When I started in model boating back in the late 1970s, model boating was growing at a very rapid rate. I could go into my local hobby store (where I saw my first model boat) and see and buy them. I could get fuel, props, the hull and engines all from the local store. Over the years the hobby has become much more diverse in the type of hulls and power plants, plus there are an infinite combination of them. For a new boater it is a daunting task to figure out what to buy and where to buy it, as the hobby stores cannot possibly carry so many different items where the volume for any one is so little.
Unfortunately, technology has made us an instant gratification society, so there are few builders anymore and a lot of folks want to take things out of the box and use them. While I don’t think this is bad, we need to recognize that this is a fact of life now. I think we need to consider this in trying to attract new boaters. This was so completely obvious when the ARF models made their way into the hobby stores. I had always been very interested in planes but never had any desire to build one. After the ARF revolution, I jumped in with both feet.
NAMBA as an organization also needs to change and evolve. We have been trying to do things the way we have always done them, with a focus on the very near term results. We have allowed the President of NAMBA to become a referee, where he should be the long term visionary of the organization. The three officers together should be working on the future of NAMBA and finding ways to increase the value of services NAMBA provides to its members. The Board of Directors that is made up of the officers and the District Directors should be the managing element of the day-to-day racing, dealing with conflicts and issues arising from the districts. Only in the most severe or serious situations should the President be involved in situations arising out of the districts. The NAMBA officers do not know all the people and nuances of situations in each district, therefore the District Directors need to be the primary face of NAMBA for these issues.
So here is my recipe for where we go from here:
1) We need to restructure the responsibilities of the officers so that the President and Vice President’s responsibilities are to move the organization forward. This includes recruiting new membership, determining the services that NAMBA needs to offer to its members, evaluating new ideas and evaluating and assessing NAMBA’s value to its members.
2) District Directors need to be a much more organized group managing the day-to-day conflict of the organization. They should talk regularly on a to discuss what is going on in the districts and share ideas of how things are being done and how problems are being handled.
3) NAMBA needs to formalize its safety program. Each district must appoint or elect a safety officer who is charged with making sure that the NAMBA safety rules are followed. Our national Safety Chairman must also coordinate and hold regular con calls with the district safety officers to keep everyone on the same page as to ESTABLISH A CONSISTENT safety policy and procedures across all districts. This is paramount to making sure we can control our insurance costs and keep and acquire new ponds.
4) NAMBA needs to establish a Race CD development and support program. This will allow us to develop a pool of race CDs that will be able provide a consistent, competent calling of races and a program to mentor and develop new Race CDs. The result of this effort will be a pool of available scored CDs on their abilities to handle races of various sizes and complexity. I can see this group being very important in interpreting and applying rules consistently across all districts.
5) The NAMBA Nationals Event needs some real help. I think the NATS are one of the most impressive things NAMBA does for its membership. NAMBA needs to form a Nationals Committee that will handle the administration and production of the NAMBA Nationals. This will allow us to have a consistent offering where resources such as sponsors, activities, and registration are identified and managed to relieve the local clubs and districts of those hardships in putting on the event. Now clubs and districts may be much more inclined to sponsor an event knowing that a lot of planning and preparation are already done. Contracts with vendors can be negotiated for years in advance with better guarantee of the consistency of representation for the vendor and support for NAMBA. The costs of producing the events will significantly drop as we formalize and make processes more efficient. An experienced nationals team will be much better equipped to negotiate for accommodations, food and amenities. In the end we will have a much richer and consistent offering wherever the NAMBA Nationals go.
6) We need to work with our vendors/providers to come up with standard out-of-the-box offerings. NAMBA needs a website where we can advertise our vendor and their offering to our members. We just need to get folks into the hobby with their first boat. Once they are there then they are engaged and can determine what other interests they may have.
7) We need to advertise. We are invisible to the world a lot of times. We are not really represented in the hobby store and in most cases we are not where folks can see how much fun this hobby is. I believe that we need to go to car racing events and set up kiosks to showcase the boats and talk with car guys about boating. This is a kindred sport with the same type of mechanical and competitive glitter. Like all organizations, the car guys often times get tired of the politics of their group and may look for other ways to express their competitive spirits. We need a solid online advertising campaign using all the social media tools at our disposal. Remember that with a single boat I can reach three thousand people interested in model boating today.
8) Lastly, and probably the most contentious of the ideas, is that NAMBA and IMPBA need to work together. I know there are long standing cultural differences between the organizations but in reality it’s not that complicated. I have raced IMPBA and I really did not have any trouble adapting to their rules. In fact, a lot of D3 runs in a very hybrid way of running races. I have raced all over the country and it’s not all that different. NAMBA is currently around 1500 members and I believe that IMPBA is somewhere around 1000 members. By working together, we are a group of 2500 members and have a much bigger group when negotiating insurance contracts and providing services to our members.
JMHO
Happy Thanksgiving
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