Angelis
Active member
There seems to be some disquiet over what's being done at the moment with regards to this forum. With criticism levelled at both myself and the rest of the team.
Before it erupts into a full scale revolution :wink3:, I've decided to post a one week report of what we have done and what will be happening in the next few months. I was actually going to do this after the first month, but here it is anyway.
If you have any questions, please post them below.
For some of you who don't know, I set up this forum last Monday using Vbulletin software. The same software that is used by fchat.
I then asked Lee, Graham and Tony to join me as they had more experience in administrating and running forums than I did. A lot of the credit must be given to them for making the forum what it is.
Hosting
The forum is currently hosted on a “simple” hosting plan with no load balancing and only 300mb of database storage. To give you an idea of how much storage we may need in the future, the pictures I posted in the Poseur Run thread came to about 19mb. That’s 6% of database storage used in one thread.
We therefore need to transfer the site on to a more powerful and reliable server with more database storage.
Lee has an account set up which we will be transferring to as soon as possible. However, we need to get a domain name registered to ease transition.
Choosing a name
This point seems to be causing the most concern amongst the membership.
So far I received over 50 names which I have posted up in the lounge.
In my personal and professional opinion, the best name submitted so far is fcars.co.uk or fcars.net. It’s short, easy to remember and is highly brandable and marketable.
It is also my personal opinion that we should not use the word Ferrari in the name for legal reasons.
Ultimately the name has to be decided by the members and all I am doing is giving my recommendations. However my concern is that a name will be chosen that will hard to promote and I particularly do not want to be involved in an organisation that has a crap name. Remember, from the name comes the logo, the stationary, the advertising.
For the time being, the working name of this site will be fcars.co.uk. Once the committee is voted in, then they can change or keep the name as they see fit.
Setting up of the Committee
Some people have asked that a committee be set up as soon as possible. This however, is not practicable. Before a committee is set up, we need to create rules and guidelines. More importantly, we need to set up a subscription service that will qualify paid up members to vote.
If we did a vote today, then what stops a troll from creating 20 fake accounts and voting himself in.
The deadline for setting up the committee is end of January. If things go to plan we may be in a position to set it up mid December (which I prefer).
Our duty is not to run this association as a dictatorship, but to have this association ready and functional for the incoming committee members. Jas has kindly agreed to help me out in this matter.
I will shortly be getting legal and accounting guidance on what is the best way to set up a club. No cost will be incurred by the members.
Business plan
I’m in the process of setting up a business plan for the association. Some people seem to be unduly worried about this.
The business plan is just a small document that contains information as to recommendations, contingency plans for hosting, advertising revenues and cash flow forecasts. It will be handed over to the committee who can do with it is as they wish.
Your views
Everyone has an opinion and that should be applauded. However, while setting up any new venture there has to be a degree of dictatorship. Every members ideas and opinions cannot be followed. We have to pick and choose.
Be also aware, that once you vote in the committee, you will no longer have any influence in their decisions. It would be unreasonable for them to have to poll the members at every opportunity. All you can do is vote them out at an AGM if you don’t like what they are doing. That’s democracy for you.
One of my upcoming tasks is to create a poll, from which we can start creating the association. The poll will not be on this website, but held somewhere else so that no one apart from the moderators will be able to see the results. This ensures that the information remains confidential and away from competitors.
The results will however be posted for subscribed members to view.
Subscription
We will need to ask members to subscribe. The poll that I will be setting up will ask what amount the members will be willing to pay on a yearly basis. All money received will initially be put towards running costs.
Sponsors
It’s only been a week since this forum was set up. In that time we have 4 confirmed sponsors and a few others pending.
A free period has been given to sponsors until Feb 14th 2006. This allows both ourselves and the sponsors to see how this website fares. I do not under any circumstance want to take a sponsors money, only to find that the members have drifted back to fchat.
It also allows the committee time to decide on the sponsorship cost.
I hope the above information resolves some of the issues that have arisen. However, I realise that most of you don’t know who I am and what right I have in saying or doing anything.
So here’s a brief resume:
I have a law degree, marketing degree, trained as a solicitor and have extensive experience in setting up dotcom businesses from scratch. I also Photoshop in my spare time.
If you have any questions please post below.
If you strongly disagree with the way things are being done, you have the use of the poll option to remove me.
Thank you
<Edited to add the folowing site statistics>
For period 2pm 01/11/05 to 7:00pm 09/11/05 the site activity in comparison to fchat are as follows:
UK section of Fchat
Threads created= 39
Posts made = 677
Fcars.net/co.uk
Threads created= 323
Posts made = 4,896
We have been slightly more busy.
Well done all.
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
Before it erupts into a full scale revolution :wink3:, I've decided to post a one week report of what we have done and what will be happening in the next few months. I was actually going to do this after the first month, but here it is anyway.
If you have any questions, please post them below.
For some of you who don't know, I set up this forum last Monday using Vbulletin software. The same software that is used by fchat.
I then asked Lee, Graham and Tony to join me as they had more experience in administrating and running forums than I did. A lot of the credit must be given to them for making the forum what it is.
Hosting
The forum is currently hosted on a “simple” hosting plan with no load balancing and only 300mb of database storage. To give you an idea of how much storage we may need in the future, the pictures I posted in the Poseur Run thread came to about 19mb. That’s 6% of database storage used in one thread.
We therefore need to transfer the site on to a more powerful and reliable server with more database storage.
Lee has an account set up which we will be transferring to as soon as possible. However, we need to get a domain name registered to ease transition.
Choosing a name
This point seems to be causing the most concern amongst the membership.
So far I received over 50 names which I have posted up in the lounge.
In my personal and professional opinion, the best name submitted so far is fcars.co.uk or fcars.net. It’s short, easy to remember and is highly brandable and marketable.
It is also my personal opinion that we should not use the word Ferrari in the name for legal reasons.
Ultimately the name has to be decided by the members and all I am doing is giving my recommendations. However my concern is that a name will be chosen that will hard to promote and I particularly do not want to be involved in an organisation that has a crap name. Remember, from the name comes the logo, the stationary, the advertising.
For the time being, the working name of this site will be fcars.co.uk. Once the committee is voted in, then they can change or keep the name as they see fit.
Setting up of the Committee
Some people have asked that a committee be set up as soon as possible. This however, is not practicable. Before a committee is set up, we need to create rules and guidelines. More importantly, we need to set up a subscription service that will qualify paid up members to vote.
If we did a vote today, then what stops a troll from creating 20 fake accounts and voting himself in.
The deadline for setting up the committee is end of January. If things go to plan we may be in a position to set it up mid December (which I prefer).
Our duty is not to run this association as a dictatorship, but to have this association ready and functional for the incoming committee members. Jas has kindly agreed to help me out in this matter.
I will shortly be getting legal and accounting guidance on what is the best way to set up a club. No cost will be incurred by the members.
Business plan
I’m in the process of setting up a business plan for the association. Some people seem to be unduly worried about this.
The business plan is just a small document that contains information as to recommendations, contingency plans for hosting, advertising revenues and cash flow forecasts. It will be handed over to the committee who can do with it is as they wish.
Your views
Everyone has an opinion and that should be applauded. However, while setting up any new venture there has to be a degree of dictatorship. Every members ideas and opinions cannot be followed. We have to pick and choose.
Be also aware, that once you vote in the committee, you will no longer have any influence in their decisions. It would be unreasonable for them to have to poll the members at every opportunity. All you can do is vote them out at an AGM if you don’t like what they are doing. That’s democracy for you.
One of my upcoming tasks is to create a poll, from which we can start creating the association. The poll will not be on this website, but held somewhere else so that no one apart from the moderators will be able to see the results. This ensures that the information remains confidential and away from competitors.
The results will however be posted for subscribed members to view.
Subscription
We will need to ask members to subscribe. The poll that I will be setting up will ask what amount the members will be willing to pay on a yearly basis. All money received will initially be put towards running costs.
Sponsors
It’s only been a week since this forum was set up. In that time we have 4 confirmed sponsors and a few others pending.
A free period has been given to sponsors until Feb 14th 2006. This allows both ourselves and the sponsors to see how this website fares. I do not under any circumstance want to take a sponsors money, only to find that the members have drifted back to fchat.
It also allows the committee time to decide on the sponsorship cost.
I hope the above information resolves some of the issues that have arisen. However, I realise that most of you don’t know who I am and what right I have in saying or doing anything.
So here’s a brief resume:
I have a law degree, marketing degree, trained as a solicitor and have extensive experience in setting up dotcom businesses from scratch. I also Photoshop in my spare time.
If you have any questions please post below.
If you strongly disagree with the way things are being done, you have the use of the poll option to remove me.
Thank you
<Edited to add the folowing site statistics>
For period 2pm 01/11/05 to 7:00pm 09/11/05 the site activity in comparison to fchat are as follows:
UK section of Fchat
Threads created= 39
Posts made = 677
Fcars.net/co.uk
Threads created= 323
Posts made = 4,896
We have been slightly more busy.
Well done all.
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
