The new year brings a time for reflection and reassessment for many of us. In the club we seem to be at a crossroads regarding the future of the Beemer Beat in its present form.
We’ve been looking for a volunteer editor since August via requests, recruiting, and Deb Dackert eloquently presenting the current dilemma at the Annual Meeting. To date no one has stepped up.
The Beemer Beat has historically served us well as the primary means of communicating all club related information such as events, announcements, contact information and most importantly, articles contributed by individuals. It’s been a magazine par excellence produced with exceptional writing, editing, and graphic design. The evolution of this magazine however has been slowly degrading as members have been contributing less and less. We have anywhere between 225 and 450 members, depending on the time of year, and it has become painfully apparent that aside from ambassador ride reports, we now receive very few member contributions. It seems that members have shifted their attention to Facebook. The club Facebook page is easy to use, interactive and always entertains. It draws new postings from a wide range of our members on a very regular basis throughout the weeks. As a result of this shift, the editor and graphic designer have often resorted to copying photos and information from Facebook.
We’ve also found that in place of a magazine, many clubs use a newsletter format to disperse needed information to their members. They also utilize the forum tab of their website where members are free to post interesting writings.
We are in the process of examining all options regarding the transition of the Beemer Beat to a new format. As this is Deb’s final issue, the Beemer Beat will be on hiatus until we come to an optimum solution to best serve the club’s members.
- Mike Davis