General Membership Meeting

[Lynne Glazer <lynne@glazer.org>]

The AERC convention has many attractions, besides watching friends 
get their hard-earned awards.  Listening to speakers on 
endurance-specific topics, improving in relevance every year.  The 
opportunity to comparison-shop for products unique to our sport, only 
viewed through print or online catalogs the rest of the year.  A 
chance to catch up with friends from other parts of the continent, a 
particular favorite of mine.

And a chance to have some input on the choices made by our elected 
directors!  While we can all attend committee meetings, these aren't 
for general member input.  That's the function of the general 
membership meeting.

There were less than 100 members in the audience this year.  I was 
appalled at this showing; the room was set up to handle at least four 
times that many.  After the Board elected its officers, there was an 
open mike so that anybody who had a question about how things were 
being run could air it in open forum.

A lot of us took advantage of that, especially from my region.  ;-)

Anybody that is able to attend convention should consider this a 
"must", IMHO, unless you're completely happy with the status quo. 
It's only 90 minutes long.  This year it was deliberately scheduled 
so as not to interfere with any of the conference speakers.  Leaving 
the vendor hall, I had to fight my way upstream through a flood of 
people headed in from one of the seminars.  It was at 11 am; seemed 
like a good choice of time slots.

Ridecamp is useful, but it doesn't equate to face-to-face contact 
with the entire slate of elected directors...if you weren't there, 
you probably didn't learn that next year's NC ride is in Kentucky, 
for instance.

Lynne
-- 
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