[JONAT] AGM report

Tue Apr 5 02:56:04 2005

[Ray, I added you to the distribution of this e-mail because it looks like
you are in charge of the 2006 AGM planning. As I mentioned at the AGM, we
are organizing a continental JCNA road tour. After the meeting it occurred
to a couple of us that the AGM would be an excellent place to start. You
might want to contact Bob England at engl_at_accesscomm_dot_ca (converting
the underscores and words to punctuation) about getting on the JONAT list so
you can follow our discussion. We are hoping that Pascal Gademer and Greg
Meboe (JONAT webmaster) can get together to transfer the JONAT info and
lists to the JCNA website. Greg and Jamie Duffey, a couple of Jaguar
enthusiasts and 2004 JONAT organizers are from the Seattle area.]

Ray Papineau, Bob, and everyone,

Yes, we definitely need to have some kind of "baton." We could have another
Jay named Mark and call him Mark 1, or since he's the second, Mark 2. You'd
just have to be clear if you're talking about him or me.

If we have any returning Sector Coordinators who aren't affiliated with a
club, I'd respectfully request that they contact the club and pull an ASC
from the club's ranks. If you were a member of a club and there is another
club in the area, you might contact them and see if they can provide an ASC.
The key to our success is going to be club involvement.

Ray, I checked your site and JCNA's and I couldn't find the AGM dates. What
are they?

Given the starting point and approximate 3time, my thought is that we'll run
the route in reverse, coming down the West Coast, then across Arizona. Since
everyone from Washington, Oregon, and California did such an excellent job
last year, I'm all for giving any of those clubs and individuals first dibs.

By the same token, it would be nice if we hit some of the places we missed
last time. For example, If Las Vegas wants to be involved, we might tie them
in this time around, by heading toward LA then cutting across. A visit to
the Peterson Museum is always fun and a spur from San Diego to LA to meet
the group there with some or all of the San Diegans continuing to Vegas
would hopefully be interesting. My local club (JCCA) is having our Saloons
in the Old West Concours, April 17 this year, and it ties in with the
Copperstate 1000 Road Rally (www.jcca.us/calendar/saloons05.htm). 

Based on last year's timing it took 13 days to get from the Arizona border
to Seattle. It might be a tad warm in the Arizona deserts after that, but I
think we could squeak by in Mid-April, especially if we adjust our drive
times to avoid the heat of the day. We would be right about on schedule to
tie the tour with the Copperstate 1000 Road Rally and our concours. Then we
could head down to Tucson, Tombstone (site of the OK Corral), and Bisbee,
which is right on the Mexican border. There are some great ghost towns along
the way.  This would create a San Diego loop -- a nice week-long excursion
from there to LA to Vegas to Phoenix to Tucson to Bisbee and back. If Las
Vegas doesn't want to get involved, we can go further south and have San
Diego be part of the main loop rather than a spur. It would be interesting
to hear from Hazel on the idea.

So I can sort of figure it out that far. (Grab an atlas or map.) After
Arizona we hit an expanse of clublessness. 2004 Participant Jag Maven is
from Albuquerque. We might get a few of his Alb. buddies to take the torch
from S. AZ toward Texas, but route from S AZ to Texas is about 220 miles
south of Alb. It's a beautiful drive north up the east side of Arizona on US
191. That would make a great loop for us Arizonans and perhaps we could hand
off in Springerville, AZ at US60. US60 crosses I-25 at Socorro, NM, about an
hour south of Alb. From there you could follow US380 the whole way to
Dallas. Unfortunately, it's over 600 miles from I-25. I have no idea how
interesting the road is. Roswell, NM is along the route. Surely the Dallas
club(s) will come out and meet the tour. Would they come out 2-300 miles? A
SC in El Paso would be a big help.

>From Dallas we have clubs all along the Gulf Coast and up the East Coast
into Canada. That will really just be a matter of who wants to do it. It's
coming back across the Northern Great Plains (and by that I mean in the U.S.
and Canada) where I anticipate a problem. At that latitude, I think
Wisconsin is our furthest west club until we get to BC and WA. This makes a
really tough decision. The whole way across Canada or drop down to Illinois
and Missouri, then cross clubless Iowa to Colorado and Utah and on to
Portland and the Western States Meet. There are gaps there, but there's a
huge clubless gap across three provinces as well.

Last time around we had you and Ian Bailey in Sask., Craig Talbot in
Alberta, and Alan Heartfield in Man. Did we have to FedEx Jay across some of
that? Where? I definitely don't want to leave you out of the loop, and as I
recall, there were something like four cars for a good distance in the
Western Provinces. As a percentage of the population of the area that's a
great turnout. Was Manitoba the weak link? If so, that this option might be
the best. Go to Salt Lake City via the second option above, then head north.
Somehow get across Wyoming and Montana (a visit to Yellowstone would be
incredible), and up to Regina, then across and down to Portland via the
Cascades or along the Columbia River.

What does everyone think of that as a rough framework?

There are some solid sponsorship options out there, one of which will be
great. Dennis Eynon has the contacts for that and as soon as we are a bit
more organized and have information posted that he can refer them to, I'll
have him go to work. We aren't going to have many national sponsors, so that
leaves a lot of JCNA sponsors like XKs Unlimited, Coventry West, and others
available to cover expenses for local clubs and sectors.

So has anyone heard anything from Greg Meboe? Getting him and Pascal
together is the first step.

Until then, let's keep brainstorming.

Mark - JCNA

-----Original Message-----
From: jonat-admin@autox.team.net [mailto:jonat-admin@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of Bob
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 7:03 PM
To: jonat@autox.team.net
Cc: 'Pascal Gademer'
Subject: RE: [JONAT] AGM report

Mark

I didn't comment yet on your ideas, so I thought I could ad my $us1.5 cents:

I like your idea about the start/finish in the Pacific northwest as it seems
there are a couple of great tie-in events.  One thing we (someone?) has to
do is put together a tentative route (i.e. very early starting point for
discussion) and put some real rough dates on it.  We found in '04 that we
had to juggle the too-hot desert areas with the too cold northern and
mountain areas to make the timing a best fit best for all.  This should be
started fairly shortly as it will take several months of messaging to come
up with even a rough schedule around which clubs can start planning events.
Last year it was done by the Route Coordinator (me), but I'm not up to that
task for '06.

Getting the clubs on board as you suggest is one of the early tasks.  In
'04, some sector organizers came on board fairly late in the day and in
fairness didn't have enough time to plan/publicise events.

Regarding lists, we currently have two lists on autox.team.net, although we
are only using the [JONAT] one.  Perhaps Pascal might be interested in
becoming the keeper of these lists (?) rather than myself?  (Another task
I'd like to shed for '06).  Or perhaps JCNA has lists and we can transfer
these lists there (?)

The pins and binder ideas we thought were great ideas for '04, but never did
get those going.  I still think they are worth merit - I'm moving my office
to the same building a fairly large pin company is in and can check on some
costs if appropriate.

I really thought that Jay added to the character of the Tour (I got some
real interesting looks carrying around a stuffed Jaguar with a cowboy hat at
the dinosaur museum and at Goodwood!)

One thing to keep in mind is corporate sponsorship timing.  If we want some
participation by Jaguar, JDHT, or other such large organizations they have
very long gestation times for their budgets, and we might want to start
thinking about making those contacts sooner than later.  Last year I had the
good fortune of making contacts with people at Jaguar Canada and the Jaguar
Daimler Heritage Trust, and would be more than happy to follow up with those
individuals if appropriate.  It think some others made a few good contacts
with Jaguar in California (but I'm not sure if we made any with PAG - anyone
out there remember)? 

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: jonat-admin@autox.team.net [mailto:jonat-admin@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of Mark Stephenson
Sent: April 4, 2005 1:05 AM
To: jonat@autox.team.net
Cc: 'Pascal Gademer'
Subject: [JONAT] AGM report

Fazal, I think that's perilously close to "biting off more than I can chew."
:-) Thanks for the support. Same to you Christina.

I'm back from the AGM. As I looked through some old e-mails I recognized
some names of people I met at the AGM. Bill Borrusch and Dave Belanger are
up for the tour in 2006, which is good news because they are still active.
Russell Glace from South Florida suggested we start in the Keys. It would
certainly be an interesting drive, and would definitely make a good link if
we can't add it to the loop.

That opens up an interesting tour construct. We're going to have a bunch of
clubs and individuals offer to do a sector, however, I'm almost positive
that we aren't going have all of them fall in a perfect loop around the
country. There will be some we just can't include. However, we can create
links. Arizona sort of pioneered this last year, but for a different reason.
Our club's home, Phoenix, was not on the route, so we had to set up a route
for the members to connect. As may be the case with South Florida, the
entire sector would be the link. What will be great about it is that we'd
have three sectors converging on one point.

Christina, you may have to opportunity to do both the ocean and the mountain
routes. 

Dennis Eynon, a fellow Jaguar Club of Central Arizona guy, my roommate at
the AGM, and the presenter of the tour to the Board of Directors, came up
with a great idea. 

The 2006 Annual General Meeting, where we have about 150 members assembled,
is set for Seattle, WA about this time next year. The Western States Meet,
probably the biggest single event in the country in 2006, will be held in
Portland, OR in mid-July. (Christina do you know the dates?) I don't think
there could be a better start and end. It may create a bit of an overlap or
gap depending on the route, but close enough, IMHO. We'd run the continent
counter-clockwise this time. These dates give us an extra two or three
weeks, which, if clubs hold events like concours on the weekends, will slow
down the run, but make it more interesting.

Mike P., I'm with you on the circles. We did that last year and we had a
successful run. (See route maps below.) I'd be willing to bet that the other
successful SCs did the same. That was the predominant suggestion from a
number of people who, for the remainder of the AGM, came up to me with
ideas. I was grateful for the suggestions and pleased that there were so
many. (More below.)

Here's a little timetable information to give everyone an idea of what we
have ahead of us. Clubs need to sanction events (concours, slalom, rally)
four months in advance and set the date. That means that we really need to
juggle about three things simultaneously. 

We need to find out what clubs are interested and if they want to have a
sanctioned event in conjunction with the tour, then we need to have them
hold off requesting the sanctioned date until we get the route set. However,
we are going to need to find out which clubs are on board, before we can set
the handoff dates. This means that we really need to have the handoffs set
by October 2005 at the latest. Tweaking between two sectors might be
possible by mutual agreement after that, but we can't allow that tweaking to
affect the other sectors down the line. Working backwards, we're probably
going to have to have the clubs committed by August and a working route
established. Moving even closer to the present, we'll start with a really
general outline which will get more and more specific as time goes on.
Preceding that, we really need to get the website up and running. If anyone
has a direct e-mail to Greg Meboe, have him e-mail me or Pascal
(pascal@jcna.com). I think Greg's sector pages as in my signature line were
excellent, allowing SCs to enter their own route information and
descriptions, tracking signups, with the security of keeping the entrant's
full name secret. I definitely want he and Pascal to talk about transferring
or setting up the same thing on the JCNA website, and transferring the JONAT
I over if that's agreeable to everyone. Pascal can set up forums for us,
too. Once that's done, we can make a big announcement to all the clubs.
(Pascal, see
<http://jonat.org/sector/info.cfm?sequence=7.0> for Greg's really cool
pages.)

I think as we build up steam, we'll need to split lists into two and perhaps
three, so management and SCs don't lose e-mail in what I expect will be a
very busy list. 

In some places, particularly the East Coast, clubs are quite close together.
I'm going to suggest that we don't have any one-day segments. The
administrative hassle isn't going to be worth it. Two day segments would be
rare, and only if one of the contiguous segments is long. If more than one
club within a reasonable proximity wants a segment, I'm going to suggest
that the multiple clubs work together and create a single segment. They can
each set up a day or two of the sector, but there will be one point of
contact for the segment. Does that sound like a good idea?

Now back to those other suggestions. We can keep them in mind for future
tours.

I received the spoke suggestion that's been mentioned here, and that's
something we can consider for the future, but if we plan for links, that is
sort of a combination of the two.

One was having pins for each sector like the Harley people do. (I had that
in my handout, although I don't think we'll have the numbers to justify it.
That first pin costs a whole lot, but after that they're cheap.) However, I
think stickers for the route book would be a good idea. Most areas of the
country that have some distinguishing feature have stickers of that, so if
it's Seattle, it might be the a Space Needle sticker, Boston might have a
bean, or maybe the North Church, etc. Clubs could probably buy a sheet for a
couple bucks.) Then again, I've seen inexpensive generic pins for the same
things, so that might be worth looking into.

Another person referred to another marque club that had a "pass the baton"
tour (sounds like us with Jay) except the segments didn't have to link
temporally with the next. Each ran a tour then got the "baton" to the next
club. That would add flexibility, but I like the continuity.

I've mentioned the route book binder with the tour and the sponsors
emblazoned on it. I've mentioned local clubs obtaining sponsors if they'd
like to cover sector costs. We'll have some sort of identifying insignia
cling, magnet, plate or something. A flat entry fee will get you those items
for as many sectors as you take. Anyone have any other ideas? The nice thing
about JCNA affiliation is that we'll have front money, so while I don't want
to make it too complex or get too involved with memorabilia (unless we can
get a memorabilia volunteer), we do have more options.

OK, I've realized that I've created a short novel here, so I'm going to
silence myself. We're in the brainstorming phase for a little while, so
throw out your ideas and we can discuss them.

Mark Stephenson, Sector Coordinator - Arizona Jaguar Owners North American
Tour (www.jonat.org) AZ Sector Home Page -
http://jonat.org/sector/info.cfm?sequence=7.0
Arizona Sector Report - http://jonat.org/mark/JONAT07AZReport
Route details - http://jonat.org/mark/secdetail/secdetail.htm
Printable maps - http://www.jonat.org/mark/routemaps.pdf
_______________________________________________
JAGUAR OWNER'S NORTH AMERICAN TOUR mailing list REPLY TO :
JONAT@autox.team.net www.jonat.org
_______________________________________________