Pagoda SL Groupの役員の改選が行われました。長く会長を努められたPeter van Esからお別れのレターが来ました。ご紹介しましょう。

2014 Election Results

Dear xxx,

We have just completed the Election procedure for the Pagoda SL Group. You can read about the outcomes here. I have been on the Board since 2007 and President since 2009. It is now time for me to hand over to the newly elected Board.

In that period we have seen a lot of changes. We grew from a full membership of 200 to almost 700 full members today. The Group started organizing more and more events, both informal get-togethers as well as the great celebrations of 50 years of Pagoda around the world. The forum continues to flourish, as does the Technical Manual.

Pagoda World, our full colour magazine, is mailed to all of you around once a year. Pagoda Notes is made available through our website regular as clockwork, 4 times per year.

In order to make this Group work we have a number of volunteers. Pagoda World editor, and Pagoda World Notes editor. Writers and photographers of articles. Membership Administrators (two), Moderators who ensure the forum remains a nice place to come to, with no advertising, no trolls and little of the mishap that plagues so many forums. A Systems Administrator who keeps things moving smoothly. Volunteers who organise events, book hotels, plan routes, make route-books and so on.

And ultimately, a Board of Directors who organise and oversee all of this on your behalf, who ensure your money is spent wisely, and who report back to you on the running of the Group through our annual report.

In fact, if you’ve followed the discussions on the forum, you will have seen that as a Group we became a little too successful. We needed to incorporate the Group in order to protect our assets, and to protect our volunteers. We changed the Charter into new Bylaws, in order to ensure that the Group could be run efficiently as a newly Incorporated entity. And we organised elections to make sure that all Board Members have the full mandate of the membership to be able to run the Group and prepare it for the next ten years. 

I would like to thank all those volunteers who managed to make this all possible. I won’t publish their names in this public newsletter, but you’ll find them posting on the forum. You will have seen their names a lot.

These people run this Group for all of you. The Full Members. I was therefore disappointed to see that so many of you did not feel qualified to vote for the new Board Members. Only 43% of you actually voted. Some replied and said that they did not know the individuals, and therefore did not feel qualified to vote. Others did not even bother to click on any of the links.

We do know that not everyone is comfortable posting on the forum. We don’t mind that. Readers who read many of the messages on the forum are important too. Users of the Wiki are important too. Even if you just read the magazines, that is fine too. But for our volunteers, for our Board Members, a vote (even if it is a ‘no’) is a sign of appreciation. It shows you care. That you took an interest in who makes this Group work.

I hope that on the next vote, which shall be to approve the annual report, a larger percentage of the Membership will vote.

以上