I fielded a lot of email and phone calls concerning event scheduling conflicts in early January. Some of these problems, unfortunately, had advanced to a stage where nothing could be done to resolve them.
Previously, all such issues went through Chips Chapman, who singlehandedly managed the scheduling process, and presented the schedule for final dissemination (and some discussion) at the annual meeting. This process had the benefit of being simple, as there was only one person to deal with. But if you couldn’t reach Chips, or you disagreed with his decisions, you weren’t left with many options. The new process is going to be more collaborative, and therefore more complicated. And we’ll need to try to fashion a workable procedure and timetable for building our annual schedule.
No one is happy with the current collision of dates and priorities, and we’ll just have to hope that things don’t go too badly for any one promoter that is involved. If nothing else, this problem has served to motivate folks to get involved in fashioning a better management solution.
One tool that I think we’ll need to develop will be a template calendar for the year, listing holidays, traditional local race dates, and regional/national events that affect rider attendance. We’ll also have to determine an impartial policy for resolving conflicts. Will the decision be based on historical precedence? Prize list or number of classes? Date of application? Vote of the board? Vote of the membership? And how will we deal with conflicts with bordering associations?
We’ll discuss these issues in more depth at the upcoming annual meeting, but these are some of the points I’ve been thinking about.