Here’s a question for folks that have active, organized unicycle clubs. What are your suggestions about how to organize unicycle club meetings? Do you have structured schedules during your meetings or are your activities just improvised when you get together? We want to get the Atlanta Unicycle Club off to a good start. Our previous meetings have been improvised, but I think future meetings could be better if we had some structure. I know that we also have to work on publicity (t-shirts, newspaper listings, club website, etc…) for the club to get a good critical mass of riders at the meetings.
We’d appreciate your input. There’s no need to get too wordy in your reply in this thread. Even if you can include a weblink to your club meeting schedules, that would help.
I suggest that your meetings not involve riding and that someone make an agenda and even take minutes. I know the formality stinks but ithat investment will pay tons down the road. The few meetings that we’ve had were week days at lunch. Ther reason that there are so few meetings with the MUC is that we are using an old, tried-and-ture form of organization called dictatorship. It seems to be working quite well - from my stand point.
My experience is as a member of a large, organized club (Redford), and then the starter of a couple of less organized, less formal clubs (Long Island Unicyclists and Gold Country Unicyclists).
Tommy has a point on the paperwork aspect. Keep it separate and you’ll hopefully get people involved. Try to mix it with the riding and none of it will likely get done, except by you.
My experience suggests you need a little bit of structure, or people will not know what’s going on, and your meetings will not have a clear beginning and ending. If you have something structured at the official start time, and again at the end time, You can attach whatever necessary activities and announcements onto that, while leaving a portion of your time wide open if that’s what works for your riders.
The challange is to make it interesting for riders of all levels. Since neither of us have experienced a true thriving unicycle club, it seems a little mysterious. You have some riders who have had a unicycle for 10 years and can idle, hop, ride backwards etc… While others have yet to ride ten feet, or freemount. I can see how things could be broken down to skill level groups if you have a lot of members, but what if you have 5 all different levels and ages?
Also is it wise to set up a club based on the specific types of interest?
Such as Muni, Trials, Freestyle, Performance, Touring, or do people make clicks on their own based on their own passion?
Though I enjoy the skills that you can develop through freestyle, I don’t see myself performing in freestyle events at any future NAUCC events. Though Muni, Trials, Touring and Racing does appeal to me. I have yet to play a single game of hockey or basketball, so I am not to sure how I would like those.
Last is the geographic issues that we deal with in Atlanta. I live maybe 20-25 minutes from Reid, but almost an hour from most of the meetings we have had. I would like to see more frequent “local” meetings with larger less frequent area meetings. Even if the “local” meetings are just two people hitting the trails.
Yes, I definitely see Tommy’s and John’s point about having separate planning meetings and riding “get-togethers”. Good advice. Are your riding “get-togethers” also structured, like your planning meetings?
I guess the best way to get the club going is for Chad and me to go riding together more often and invite everybody in the Atlanta club and Atlanta Juggling club to join us. We will naturally get more organized (we’ll have to) as we increase our rider numbers.
The way that we do rides in the MUC is sort of loose. However, there is a general plan (MUni, urban playing, freestyle, basketball-gym stuff, etc.) and within that we make-up the specific part on the spot after we see who is there and what we feel like doing. I think that if you present too much structure to your rides you will dilute your herd too much. I think that most of us just like sharing the camaraderie of being together. Anybody can ride to their heart’s content by themselves but we get together to share that screwy passion we have for playing on one wheel. Our Tuesday evening practices (and most well attended) are a perfect example of this. We meet at a public park plaza. The plaza has flat, smooth places to learn and develop skills, tons of steps and is adjacent to some easy trails through an old-growth forest. The plaza serves as a rendezvous point and sort of a hub. We ride and focus on what each individual is more interested in doing and then generally hang-out at the plaza between playing on trials challenges, playing on the trails and/or learning to mount.
As for Tommy Thompson’s suggestion of meeting around a table without unicycles, that may work in Memphis, but it would never fly in NYC. You pretty much have to go with the flow of your group. And face that this keeps certain members coming back to your group, and makes others lose interest. As an example,
I have suggested that our club try some of the group riding routines many uni clubs do, and got seriously chewed out for suggesting that. The idea was just killed quickly. That’s what I mean by each group finds its own interests/activities and resists changes in the status quo. You have to see what your group attracts.
In NYC, we just meet outside (first Sunday, third Saturday of each month) with all the unicycles we can gather. We ride, chat, munch, juggle, and provide LOTS of encouragement and teaching for anyone. We also exchange informal product reviews and tips on quality of products and such. David Stone keeps the minutes and emails them to everyone. That works.
If we need to do some business, like website design or tee-shirts or planning an annual party, we just pull a few interested members off to the side for that and do the job.
A website helps (NewYorkUnicycle.com), and meeting in a public park with many passerrs-by may bring in new members, though we haven’t found that. Lately we have been getting TV morning shows and major local magazines to give us coverage!!
I suggest you try different things, and see what your group likes–what keeps members coming back.
I could not agree with you more. It is the “off to the side” part of what you are talking about that I suggest is what works for us. We have found that when we need to “talk business” it is best to dedicate a place in time and space for that to happen.
I agree, too, that you need to do what works for the group. Last year at the NAUCC we held an all-comers, round table discussion on what works for each club. The clubs represented at that conversation were as diverse as they could have been - from very structured to the most serendipitous gatherings. Whatever works – works.
There are so few of us (unicyclist) that we have few options to choose from in regard to organizations, clubs, etc. When ego, agenda and vision get in the way of having fun folks will vote with their feet.
I think having really cool shirts and logos make a big difference. I think what you call yourselves makes a difference as well. In Atlanta, I want to make it as inclusive as possible. At the same time, you have to be aware of what your initials spell out.
MUC
NYU
AZU
LUC
TCUC
RTUC
All good.
AUC Atlanta Unicycle Club
SUC Southern Unicycle Club:(
TAU Team Atlanta Unicycling:D My favorite so far.
The TAU of Unicycling. Finding your inner balance. Logo could be a wheel with the ying/yang symbol... I published it here first, so I am Copyrighting, Trademarking the idea here and now. I can think of all kinds of one liners and logo ideas. Of course some may find it offensive. Not sure. What do some others think? It isn't as offensive as Southern Unicyle Club to me.
I don’t have much experience with a unicycling club, but here’s a few suggestions from a juggling club.
We meet every week for about two hours. We have any announcements an hour into the meeting. That way, people have time to get there late, leave early, etc.
Try and get into a newspaper if at all possible. Write up an article about yourselves and send it in. I was riding down the street and a reporter for a local newspaper stopped me and asked if he could do an article on me. We set up a time and we had an excellent article written about me and the juggling club. After that, we got a lot of exposure and a lot of gigs which helped with the size of the club. We now have a relatively large club and make lots of money (we’re a not-for-profit organization and will do volunteer gigs just as fast as paid gigs, but people just want to give us money for some reason ).
Gosh, I was blessed when we were talking about starting our club. Lewis (Animation) came up with “Come out and play in the MUC!” I think that slogan should be worth some money. I’ve gotta call a lawyer, quick.
I think having an up to date website for the club is important, so people don’t have to go to one meeting to find out when the next meeting is.
It also saves you from saying SATURDAY AT 10 on the phone over and over again on Thursday.
During the winter, when we have to rent space, we have one weekly meeting of 2 hours.
During the non-winter seasons, I schedule 2 rides per week. One ride is the ride for beginners, or trick-working-on’ers, to come out…and if no one new shows up and we want to go for a ride, we’ll go for a ride.
The other day of the week alternates between MUni and Urban.
I think this schedule will please everyone.
We’ve never had a formal meeting dealing with paperwork, or anything.
