Yeovil Camera Club

Chairman's News - Summer 2006

 

This is the first of what I hope will be a regular, but not necessarily frequent, update on club matters of inters to the members.

Your new committee was elected at the AGM on May 22nd when 28 members attended and took part in the liveliest AGM for many years. They represented 70% of the total membership! What a turn out!

Much time and passion was devoted to the discussion of a "Novices Section" in our internal competitions. I will refer to this later.

A healthy financial position is developing from the prudent steps agreed last year so that both the annual membership fee and weekly attendance fee were unchanged but to encourage younger members those under 16 should be free and £3 for those 16-21 not in full time employment.

It is an honour to be elected as your Chairman for the coming year and my first task must be to correct a massive oversight at the AGM. We failed to recognise the efforts and energy deploy by the out going Chairman, Keith, although it was arguably covered by Cyril  I would like to apologise to Keith and register my appreciation of his efforts.

There are four items to report as follows: -

1. Committee Structure - At our first meeting it was agreed to co-opt two additional members to provide a broader base of representation. The past Chairman Keith  agreed to join the committee and continue his energetic support along with Perta  to represent the "Novices" of the club!!
2. Novices - To reflect the views debated at the AGM a Novices section was agreed for all competitions. The definition developed may not be perfect but we must start somewhere and refine as we go along. The main points are these. Any one can declare them a Novice and enter their section of the competition. At the year end the 1st and 2nd overall in the Novices section will become full ranking competitors there after. In any competition the judge will be given the power to decide whether the 1st and 2nd should also be judged in the main group. No one will be forced to be a novice, however the committee may encourage appropriate Novices to compete openly. Further details will be presented before next seasons competitions begin.
3. Website - this is now up and running again after some misunderstanding. The development of the site is under constant review and as a trial we are adding notes on our club meetings plus this letter and possibly images of the last competition winners but not the Cave and Mockridge cup. If deemed a success we shall publish all winning images in future.
4. Awards for All Grant - You may have seen the note in the Western Gazette to the effect that our application was favourably received and approved. Richard, John and Paul are currently developing a technical evaluation of available equipment with a view to purchase in the Autumn and use there after. A training programme for members is included in the proposal and we shall develop this after the purchase has been decided.

Well those are all the bullet points for now, the summer programme seems to be going swimmingly, a strong interest in AV is developing around "AV Gold". Keith will provide info as required on either item.

Good shooting
Tony

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