AGM 15th March 2009
The EckO AGM took place after the Creag Mhic event on March 15th.
Minutes now available
Reports
Chairperson - Andy Dale
It has been another very successful year for EckO. We’ve continued the frenetic pace of organising events, with 17 in the past year at a quick count. For this we’re indebted to the landowners who have been so accommodating to us. Turnouts were often excellent. In the spring, it was especially good to see numbers boosted by juniors preparing for the OLI schools champs. In September we had our first ever club champs (in my two-and-a-bit year memory at least) at Ganavan with a handicap system cunningly devised by Lynne and a social afterwards. Kate, as our club champ, gets to organise next year! Putting on so many events would be impossible without willing course planners and organisers, so it has been encouraging to see some new folks trying their hand at these jobs. By keeping our events low key and fun, the idea is that they’re not too onerous to put on.
The club has several new maps, most significantly the wonderful new survey of Kerrera which made its debut at the Purple Thistle event last summer. It proved a real challenge and a superb venue for an event. Even better, we could take part on our home turf without needing to organise the event! In addition, Niall planned the first event on the updated Glen Aray map in November, and we formally adopted the Aird’s Park map from the Scottish OA, sampling its western end (Ardnaskie) as part of the spring series. The map is a little out of date but is currently under revision by Stirling Surveys for the upcoming Scottish Orienteering League (SOL) event in April.
The year saw an increase in the number of EckO members travelling to events outside of Argyll, especially to the SOL events spread around Scotland. Fine though our local terrain is, it can be a pleasure to run in a different environment. We had a team in the 11-person relay (or rather a team and a half!) for the second year running and a team in the CompassSport Cup on a chilly day over on the Pentland Hills.
For the next year, the challenge will be to maintain the pace of providing frequent orienteering locally while keeping it fun and spreading the organisational load.
Happy orienteering!
Secretary - Lynne Walker
In many respects the task of Secretary has been a little less onerous in the past year. There have been few direct communications from the SOA and British Orienteering. Most of the ‘happenings’ have been announced on the relevant websites for all the membership to see. However this leads to problems as you actually have to go to the website and keep yourself updated on a regular basis and I struggle to do this!
We are in the middle of a lot of change which is coming from British Orienteering (and remember that is YOU as well if you are a member!). I attended the British Orienteering AGM at Easter 2008 when the membership voted for a change to the event levy fee. This levy depends on the numbers you have attending an event and should be favourable to smaller events while the larger events will be contributing a lot more to the running of British Orienteering.
Various committees in British Orienteering have also implemented changes and 2009 is being viewed as a year of transition. The main effect that you will notice is with regard to events when you venture out with our local area. Almost all events in Scotland will be run along ‘colour coded’ lines. Full explanations of this are on the SOA website and the British Orienteering website (or just come along and ask!). As Paul (Membership) has also reported, another change is that there is an increase in our event fee for non-British Orienteering members.
All events are now registered electronically (Andy Dale & I are the ones allowed to do this!) and the participation / levy form is also returned electronically. This should make the task relatively simple. We still need to keep all the registration sheets for a number of years after each event.
Finally, remember that EckO is YOUR club and we need any of your contributions - never feel that you are not experienced enough or not capable of taking on something at an event. We are a small club and the more everyone does then the less onerous the tasks are!
Treasurer - Ross Lilley
On income front; The Spring, Autumn series events were again well attended with a growing number of regulars at the Lorn events. This generated circa £1300 which along with £1100 Ecko share of the Purple Thistle Weekend takings comprised most of the club income for the year since March 2008.
On expenditure front; The final payment for the Kerrera map including the PG plot for a potential future North Kerrera addition amounted to circa £1600 (including several batches of map printing paper). The other main expenditure was on equipment amounting to £1100 including annual insurance, replacement of various S.I. cards and units either lost or failed in someway and license to use auto-download for the SOL2 this year. On the latter the Treasurer inadvertently paid for a 5 year license rather than 1 year so a partial re-claim may be due. The club also paid over £500 for new ecko o-tops for which the treasurer has yet to receive re-imbursement from several folk.
So despite an overall excess expenditure over income this year the club finances remain healthy with circa £3500 remaining balance in our various accounts.
We have commissioned Stirling Surveys to re-map Ardnaskie for the SOL2 event which will be a significant expenditure for 2009/10 but we should expect to get a reasonable income from the SOL2 entries especially if the offer of a weekend’s orienteering attracts more than the usual crowd to the event.
Website / Publicity - Paul Frost
The website had a spruce up last year and I hope it has made things easier to find. Any requests for additional features are welcome.
I am investigating the “Social Media websites” (Twitter, Facebook etc.) to see if there are any options we can offer for those using these services.
We currently have 97 people signed up for email newsletters but I suspect some of those are not being read as we have never seen them at an event.
Newspaper publicity has not been very successful this last year. Partly due to the poor attendance of Dunoon events and so nothing to report to the local paper. The Oban Times does not seem so friendly when it comes to reporting our events.
It is hard for me to be very effective in the Oban area due to the distance away. So I am proposing that there should be someone local that is responsible for publicity in the Oban area, could that be YOU?
This would involve lobbying the Oban Times and putting up posters in strategic locations.
I have volunteered to be the marketing/publicity officer for the Scottish 6 Days when it comes to Oban in 2011 and it would be very helpful to have a local that could support me in this role and it would fit in nicely with the above.
Membership - Paul Frost
Last year British Orienteering introduced a system whereby members received a £2 discount on entry fees at larger events. This year they have extended this to cover all events. This is partly to encourage people to join and also make it easier to keep track of people attending events. It is a requirement of the insurance that records are kept of entrants for 5 years in case of a claim.
This means that we need to increase the cost of entry to our events to allow for the fact that most people will be claiming the £2 discount and we can’t afford that loss of income.
If you are not a member of British Orienteering the first year is free. At the moment the cost for subsequent years is £3 junior, £16.50 adult or £27 family. This is the total cost for membership to British Orienteering, Scottish Orienteering and EckO (the EckO bit is free).
So if you haven’t joined yet can I ask you to go to the membership page and read the details and download the membership form and send it off. It’s free for this year and if you don’t feel it’s worth continuing after that it’s cost you nothing.
Carol Burnap (Cowal Area rep)
TAY 2009 Day2 - Kinnoull
Things are starting to move along. All the clubs involved in helping on Day2 have agreed on the allocation of tasks and appointed their team leaders. On the day, EckO has responsibility for running the string course as well as marshalling the road crossing. Paul Frost has agreed to be EckO’s team leader and will be looking for all EckO members attending the event to help!
Opinions are still divided as to the best area to use for the string course. This will be decided in the next few weeks, after which the map can be drawn.
AGM Minutes
- Welcome & Apologies
Andy Dale (Chairman) welcomed all to the meeting.
Present: Paul Frost, Lynne Walker, Carol Burnapp, Kate Hunter, Marieke Steuben, Gill Berrow, June Bleazard, Leigh Murray, Andy Dale, Ross Lilley, Alan Partridge, Andy Beveridge.
Apologies: Mary Greig, Julie Watson, Niall Urquhart - Minutes of the 2008 AGM.
Approved.
- Committee reports
Available to view prior to the meeting on the EckO website. All reports were approved.
Paul spoke about having a person in the Oban area who could put up posters in advance of events and do publicity. - Membership fees / structure for 2010
British Orienteering incentive to join them by reduced entry fees for events. ALL events now attract this ‘reduced for members’ fee (previously Local events were exempt)
Entry fees for our local events were set at
Junior: £2
Senior: £5 (with £3 for BOF members)
There will be no club membership fee.
Proposed: Ross Lilley - Seconded: Carol Burnapp - Events 2009 / 2010
- Oban triple weekend: SOL 2 / Inverawe Saturday CC / Oban street evening event: Paul will co-ordinate all 3 events. Pre-entry set up for all three events. Many members have volunteered to help so all should get a run. Inverawe event will be the same as the Thursday evening club event 23rd April.
- Scottish 6 Days, Day 2, 3rd August 2009: Ross / Carol / (Niall) involved. EckO are helping on the day (string course / road crossing / drinks point). Paul is team leader for the day and will make sure that we can cover the jobs. Fiona Berrow & Julie Watson are the string course Supremes.
- Autumn / winter events 2009 / 2010: look at Lochaber running series of events and slot in as people were torn as to which to do. New committee to look into this. (Mountain bike / running / swimming / football etc to be looked at to avoid clashes).
- Election of the committee
- Chairman: Ross Lilley
- Secretary: Lynne Walker
- Treasurer: Andy Dale
- Publicity & Membership: Paul Frost
- Lorn: Kate Hunter
- Cowal: Carol Burnapp
- Child protection: Gill Berrow
Committee members:
All present voted for the committee above.
- A. O. C. B.
Equipment (Ross Lilley): do we have an inventory of it all? Stramash are buying some kit. Andy D will go and look through the kit in detail.
ABREEF (Carol Burnapp): do we want to put something on in Dunoon 1st / 2nd October? Castle Gardens would ideal. Gill will get in touch with Lyndsey Keddie from the Active Schools side although it will be held at Hunter’s Quay / Hafton. Who will approach the caravan site owners (Campbells)? Paul will make an approach, Andy B will provide a telephone number.
- Date of 2010 AGM.
March 2010 at an appropriate time & location.
- Award of trophies
Forest trophy (for services to the club or excellent results) Andy Dale
Junior shield (Junior performance): Roanne Lilley
Wooden compass (for a mistake you wish you had not made!) Andy Beveridge for his performance at the relay change-over at the British Champs.
The AGM closed with about a dozen partaking of the 2 / 3 course meal deal at the Hotel.
Posted on 23rd Mar 09
by Andy Dale - Treasurer
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