Well, if you haven't heard from us already, then unfortunately you haven't got a winning entry into next year's MLOC Calendar.

HOWEVER! There is still a great opportunity to get your photo in print in the calendar! That's right, this year we are introducing a couple of extra features into the calendar. One of these features is a members photo montage.

There will be a 13th page to the calendar containing photos you send in of memories of the year with your Lotus.

Send your full resolution photos to this email: jon at midlandslotus . co . uk (without the spaces) and we'll do our very best to get them in print for everyone to enjoy all year.

So don't delay, send in your photos now, you have until the evening of Sunday November 15th to get them to us.

Thanks

In order for us to get the best price & quality for next year's calendar we'd really like to get a good idea of how many we are likely to need. Based on a similar price tag to this year's (£10 delivered), if you'd like a calendar please could you tick the poll stating how many you would like.

The price for the 2010 MLOC Calendar is still TBC as it will be dependant on order quantities.

This is only to give us an idea of order numbers and is not for you to place an order. More details of this will follow soon.

Thanks.

Edit - I've moved this to the main section of the site from the contributing members section to get more visibility.

The current setup is:

Me - Upgrades/Administration of the site, stickers/calling cards sending out, lots of other bits and bobs
Chris H - Advertising/Moderation
Martin R - Moderation
Steve J - Moderation
Jon S - Moderation and is picking up this years Calendar
Ladders - Moderation, design of MLOC materials like the flyer/calendar, also helping Jon with the calendar this year.


Things I have started investigating and others could pick up if they want?

Lummo - 1 - MSA approval for us - Would allow us to create our own events using the public liability insurance.

2 - Based on the above going through, I'd like to create an "events team" to create help with the organisation of some events, nothing major to start with, just a rolling road day or a day out somewhere and take it from there as people seem to like meeting up with other members.

Fiona - 3 - Xmas lunch, anyone fancy picking that up? Wouldn't take much organising to phone somewhere up and meet for a quick lunchtime bite?

Stockhome, aheaton and DazB - 4 - Promotional items:

4a) Tax disc holders, needs quotes
4b) New replacement sticker with the new logo, needs quotes
4c) Midlands Lotus Tshirt? We have a design created but needs investigation into how many people would want one so we can get quotes for costs etc
4d) Key rings, new logo, again quotes required
4e) Calling cards new logo, quotes required
4f) Roller banners/flags for events we attend, quotes required

I was thinking that maybe tax disc holders and key rings would be seen by garages when you take your car for service etc and are fairly cheap and thus promote us more.

5 - The new forum will have an operation of us creating custom pages, including a custom front page if required, I was thinking of setting up a "news team" to post up the latest Lotus news, then people would come to read that etc. I can supply the news easily enough if people can reword it and post it up. - Fairly non techy to do that with the new forum.

6 - Wiki editor/champion - To promote and update the wikwi and encourage other to do so.

Other ideas:

Yearly birthday messages - Chris H idea, then it would get people who have forgotten about MLOC a yearly reminder and a birthday greeting. This could be coded automatically so no help needed with this one.

After the upgrade, divulge more power down to the moderators to be able to do things on the site as the admin options should allow this! Maybe even hand the site over to everyone and vote who runs it etc.

Mass message to everyone telling them what's going on and to look at new site etc, invite dormant members back to visit.

Thinking of scrapping the "contributing member" as no one uses that section anyway and maybe just allow people to donate if they want to for no real extra benefits other than wanting to as we don't get a great deal of money from it anyway vs banner adverts! This would then move the finances into the members area so everyone could see how rich/poor we are.

Possibility of allowing a monthly donation or yearly etc instead as a direct debit, if we had a guaranteed regular cash flow it would allow us to actually budget for things such as Tshirts etc and also maybe have a better hosting package than the shared one we have at the moment (maybe even based in the UK instead).

As you have probably guessed, want to kickstart MLOC again as part of this site upgrade as I've been a bit slack on it recently due to a hectic household!


Anything else you can add?!? or volunteer for?

Just in case you notice any problems over the next 15 minutes.

Will be well worth reading when it is on sale .

Some stunning cars and sublime roads. It makes me want to go to Skye