This is your AKA. Please tell us what we can be doing for you. Anyone with suggestions or concerns should contact their Regional Director.
We have opened up the Board Meeting process. The Bylaws say that Board Meetings are open to all members. It is true, they are. But Board Meetings are traditionally held by teleconference. The teleconferencing fee under the traditional system has been about $30 per hour per person. Multiply that by 21 people on the Board and it gets pretty expensive. Plus, Members joining the meeting would incur the $30 per hour cost. That has discouraged many Members from joining in to listen to the meeting.
Enter VOIP, Voice Over Internet Protocol. We have looked at Ventrilo for teleconferencing. The downside to Ventrilo is that there is no dial-in access. It is computer-only. We have started using HighSpeed, now HighDef, a teleconferencing service using Skype. Skype is a free program people can put on their computers. With Skype, people can talk to other people with Skype, anywhere in the world, for free.
To join an AKA Board Meeting, just go to the AKA Web Site, go to the Club House… Via the navigation menu, Table of Contents > Members > Members Only > The Club House. At the top left of the Cub House page, click on the BoD Meetings link and the connection info is right there.
There has been discussion on the Board about the possibility of bringing back Intermediate. There are a lot of good points on both sides of the issue. Don’t expect a change anytime soon. Just understand that is has the attention of both the AKA Sport Kite Committee and the Board of Directors.
Surveys:We sent out a Survey to Novice and Experienced Sport Kite Competitors asking what they think about several aspects of competition. We got great feedback. We got nearly a 50% response which shows that Sport Kiters are really involved in their activity.
The Survey we sent to Sport Kiters was so well received that we developed and sent another Survey that went out to the general membership of the AKA. We are using Survey Monkey online to tabulate the responses. We are hoping for 1,000 responses. Individual responses will not be looked at. Survey Monkey is only giving back the numbers it is programmed to spit out. Anonymity is virtually guaranteed. Survey Monkey is looking at IP addresses from responses. If it gets more than a half dozen responses from the same IP address, it will flag them. It is hard to believe that anyone would stuff a ballot box on a survey, but it is being checked.
If you haven’t done the Survey yet, please drop by the AKA Web Site, go to the Cub House and fill it out. On the Club House page, right under the link for BoD Meetings is a link that goes to the Survey. It only takes about 10 minutes. It is password protected. The password is on the AKA Web Site in the Club House. No Surveys will be accepted after June 23, so drop by soon!
The AKA had a terrific presence at the Smithsonian Kite Festival in Washington DC on March 29. There are some pictures and text on the AKA Kite Talk Forum in the Messages from the President section.
See you out there somewhere.
good heavens;
gary engvall